In the 26th episode of the VisualMakers Podcast we talk to Markus Zirn, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Workato, the automation and integration tool provider.
Markus already gained experience with NoCode, or visual programming as it was called back then, during his studies in the 80s. But before he became active in the software sector, his career path first led him to strategy consulting at Russell Hamilton, where he modelled the processes of his clients - albeit with Lotus Notes, so the contact with visual programming remained. During his work he noticed that in almost all companies IT and business were artificially separated. There were two groups, one group that really understood how the processes and operations worked, but often had difficulty formulating what could be done better. And the developers who were great at implementation but didn't have a deep understanding of the processes. So it was only a marginal fraction of employees who were able to implement IT processes, which was incredibly limiting for the companies. With the spread of software-as-a-service and cloud computing, the need to break through this limitation has grown enormously in recent years. In addition, Markus also sees the trend that IT people nowadays want to get much more involved in the processes and gain more understanding of the operational processes. NoCode tools help break down the communication barriers and enable both groups to work together. These are all factors that are driving the development and need for NoCode tools, leading to a new IT persona that works right at the interface between business and IT.
After leading product management for integrations at Oracle and taking his first start-up public, he was looking for a change after 15 years of product management. Eventually, everything fell into place at Workato: Workato is an automation and integration platform. It helps especially larger companies to map, link and automate their processes. The integration approach is really very deep and goes much further than with other tools. The product can be used to merge practically all data sources of the company, there are prefabricated connectors to hundreds of applications, but also own database systems or individual applications can be linked with Workato. Developers also have the option of writing their own connector. This opens up new possibilities for automation, because most processes exceed the limits of individual applications. In larger companies, the number of applications used increases even more, but thanks to the vertical integration of the systems, even manual entries in the automated workflow are possible - and easily integrated through Slack/Microsoft Team Reports.
This is where Workato clearly sets itself apart from other automation tools such as Zapier or Integromat, which Markus and his team see as great inspiration rather than competition. The focus on larger companies ultimately creates completely different requirements in terms of data protection & IT security. Workato has invested a lot in ISO certifications and GDPR compliance, e.g. a data centre was built in Frankfurt especially for European customers. In fact, many customers even come from other integration service providers, where progressive employees have simply bought automation tools by credit card, but then at some point the IT department gets involved when security risks arise. In addition to data protection, IT governance structures and collaboration are a big focus for Workato in the future. The fact that customers such as Slack now organise their entire business operations via Workato also brings new challenges, such as the fact that 15 people have to be able to work on a project at the same time. When a company has hundreds of people working with Workato, needs like access permissions have to be addressed, but because Workato is highly iterative and releases more than 200 updates per year, customers don't have to wait long for such improvements.
This customer-centricity is also reflected in its success, as Workato has been growing steadily since its foundation. However, the Corona pandemic has accelerated growth even further, because companies have realised that businesses that take digitalisation and automation seriously are more competitive and better off overall.
This has also had a clear impact on the number of employees. When Markus started at Workato, he was one of 5 people where he was the only non-developer responsible for everything the developers didn't feel like doing. In the meantime, Worakto has grown to 600 employees. Since February alone, 300 employees have been hired. Especially in Asia and Europe, a lot of staff is currently being sought in order to grow further in the regions.
If you want to learn more about Workato, their website workato.com is the first place to go. For anyone interested, there is also a test environment where you can familiarise yourself with the tool. In addition, the provider also offers the Workato Academy, a learning programme to make it easier for beginners to get started.
