Workhorse

Idea

Introduction

Workhorse gives SME customers the benefits of custom-built software across all areas of their operation. We have designed our product to solve complex business process challenges, to integrate existing business applications where necessary, and all with the look and feel of a bespoke system.

From experience, using spreadsheets to manage business processes is inefficient, time consuming, high on data risk, and limits reporting.

We believe that off the shelf software is failing SMEs because:
• SMEs are diverse and have unique processes.
• SaaS addresses single business areas only, like sales or billing.
• They are overwhelmed with complexity.

We feel SMEs need one, integrated application that supports their specific operation, for a price they can afford and that can be easily customised to the way they want to run their business, both now and as they grow into the future.

Intended impact

Workhorse’s goal is to put SMEs back in control of mission critical software, delivering effective applications with real time savings and enhancing visibility of day to day operations.

As a post-revenue scale-up, we have a firm base of existing customers who have proven demand and verified how to scale our business. We have delivered over 50 applications across many industry sectors and functional business areas.

Our customers operate in Finance, Legal, Events, Marketing, Recruitment, Membership, Manufacture, Installation & Maintenance, E-commerce, Training and Retail. These customers have benefitted in terms of cost saving, efficiency, reporting and data quality.

Workhorse also manages all functional areas from Sales & Marketing, to Operations, Administration and Finance. But our customers only get the functionality they need, they use 100% of their Workhorse application and there is nothing missing.

Substantial accomplishments to date

We have hit our first major milestone, having over 50 customers, generating a monthly recurring revenue of £8,600. They operate in 5 different countries and Workhorse, being multi-language by design, has delivered applications in both English and German.

Our technology platform is now ready for our next stage of growth, having transitioned to a robust, scalable architecture running on Amazon Web Services. In 2019 we launched our first template solutions to enable further customer acquisition and deployment, with proven web-based sales already achieved.

We have built a team with a deep understanding of the problem we are aiming to solve and the high configurability that allows Workhorse applications to be truly customised to our customers’ requirements.

Our customers range from micro businesses to multi-nationals with 750 staff and £85m turnover. Our architecture allows us to offer solutions whose complexity flexes to match the needs of these businesses, tailoring applications to their exact requirements.

We plan to engage with third party Value Added Resellers with the aim of enhancing scale and to offer each reseller a white label solution that will give them the ability to deliver their own customised applications. This is the start of our journey aiming to become the Wordpress equivalent for operations and administration applications.

Monetisation strategy

Workhorse generates revenue from SaaS subscriptions. Some more complex applications require an implementation fee, but for most small businesses we offer our service for a manageable monthly payment, with no upfront fee and no minimum term.

Our monthly subscriptions range from £195 up to £500 for our larger, more complex applications.

We will be targeting resellers that will range from consulting businesses, looking for a tool to help them implement and manage business process changes, to organisations looking to sell our hyper-specialised applications to a specific industry sector. Our pricing model for Resellers will be a yearly license fee and a monthly charge per client application.

Use of proceeds

Over the past 15 months we have invested heavily in the development of Workhorse as a robust, scalable solution and have generated a monthly recurring revenue of £8,600 with 50 customers. Over the next 18 months we plan on leveraging that capability to grow the business and customer base further.

We will need to invest further in the development of our platform, roll out more templates and employ more staff to manage the VARs we are aiming to work with.

We aim to work alongside two resellers, learn with them and support them and their customers, preparing for the next phase of growth that we aim to be driven by multiple international resellers.

We plan to increase traction with our web-based, direct sales. Combined, these strategies will launch Workhorse towards our goal of becoming the Wordpress equivalent for core operations and process support for the vast SME market.

Notices

Please note that the company has a £12,500 director's loan with an outstanding balance of £3,879.25. The loan accrues interest at 6.2% APR over 2 years. The final repayment date is on the 1st January 2020. None of the funds raised on Seedrs will be used to repay this loan.