There are many dimensions to managing a company efficiently, and a very important task that needs to be taken care of is tracking the working hours, attendance and leaves of the employees. From the complicated process of maintaining hand written journals, to honor system, where attendance management was simply based on the trust placed by the employers on the employees, there are many complicated methods that companies followed earlier. But now technology has made attendance management much simpler. A Poland based company 'Calamari' is working to simplify the task further with features such as iBeacon technology and easy login into the platform through Slack account. Here is more about this innovative startup
Calamari Highlights
| Startup Name | Calamari |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Warsaw |
| Founders | Hubert Lisek, Kamil Wojewoda & Tomasz Majewski |
| Sector | HR management |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Website | calamari.io |
About Calamari
Calamari - Founders
The Idea Behind Starting up Calamari
Calamari - Name & Logo
Calamari - Business Model & Revenue Model
Calamari - Challenges
Calamari - Growth & Future Plans
About Calamari
Calamari provides a modern time recording and online absence management system, which effectively improves HR management in any organization, be it a small startup or a large organization. Calamari's products include-
- Calamari Leave Management System - It allows users to automate PTO (Paid Time Off) calculation and simplifies the task of leave management. From tracking leaves to leave approvals, Calamari makes it all easy. The product is developed in such a way that it can be adapted to the vacation policy of most of the countries in the world.
- Calamari Clock In / Clock Out - It Allows users to record working time and breaks, create attendance lists and reports. Calamari is one of the first companies to use iBeacon technology. Bluetooth iBeacons are small battery operated devices. Once the employees have the Calamari app on their mobile phones, the bluetooth iBeacon devices can sense and record when the employees are in the office, and automatically starts the shift, without the employees having to do anything. The company also offers QR scanning option for marking attendance. Besides attendance and break management can be done via web browser, mobile app and even Slack.
Calamari User Interface is available in five languages including English, German, Polish, French and Spanish, and its products can be used seamlessly in different countries of the world.
At Calamari, we believe that HR management automation not only facilitates work but also saves time and money that companies can spend on their further development.
Also Read: Top 5 HR Tech Startup in India- An Ultimate Solution Of Your Career Growth
Calamari - Founders
Calamari founders Hubert Lisek, Kamil Wojewoda and Tomasz Majewski are all IT graduates from Military University of Technology in Warsaw.
At Calamari, Hubert Lisek manages a team of mobile programmers for financial and sales aspects.
Kamil Wojewoda is currently the VP of Customer Success at Calamari and Tomasz Majewski is the CTO.
The Calamari team consists of 10-30 people.
The company has a friendly, cozy atmosphere conducive to development. We are willing to help and open to mutual suggestions. Currently, due to COVID-19, our entire team works remotely, but we do not lose enthusiasm and willingness to work - said the founders emphasizing on the company's work culture
The Idea Behind Starting up Calamari
The inspiration for creating the product came from a vacation management tool used by the company in which one of the founders of Calamari worked. Calamari founders were confident that they can design a much better tool for leave and attendance management than the ones being used. For the first 5-6 months, the founders were working on Calamari's product development side by side with their regular jobs. However, they soon realized that they required to devote more time to the project, and they left their jobs to work full time for Calamari. The company received its first client after 6 months of inception; in the next 12 months the company got 50 clients and the numbers are increasing since then.
While working on the product, we decided that we want to develop Calamari as a global product and it was a great decision. Creating a product for the international market approaches its production differently it is more flexible and goes to a larger market, which gives much wider opportunities to acquire customers. We received valuable feedback necessary for product development from customers, and worked upon them
Also Read: Top SaaS Products for Tracking Time and Activity
Calamari - Name & Logo
Coming up with the name for our product, we were looking for something simple to pronounce in many languages, so it could me more user-friendly. The word "Calamari" met this need. - the founders quote
The second reason for choosing this name was that Calamari (squid) represents flexibility which is one of the core values of the company. However, the most important reason was that real calamari (squids) have three hearts - just like Calamari has three co-founders. The company's logo is a combination of squid and calendar combined together.
Calamari - Business Model & Revenue Model
Calamari is a B2B company. The company has both small startups and large corporations as clients.
The customer pays for access to Calamari. The cost of the subscription depends on the number of employees and the modules selected. At present, the lowest price for both the modules, i.e, the module for managing holidays and the module for registering working time, is $ 30 a month, for teams of up to 100 employees. Calamari creates customized plans for those companies that have more than 100 employees.
Also Read: Smart Strategies To Get Job In a Startup Company
Calamari - Challenges
Making the product adaptable to the Holiday policies of different countries was a challenging task for the team. As the founders put in -
Our customers praised Calamari for simplicity and intuitiveness from the very beginning, but we also had problems. One of our first biggest challenges was to solve the problem of managing vacation limits. Various holiday policies from countries around the world made the task even more difficult. However, we decided to completely rebuild the engine calculating the holiday dimension and successfully solved the problem.
Adding new and technologically advanced features to the product is a constant challenge for the team.
Calamari - Growth & Future Plans
Founded in 2014, within 6 years of its inception, Calamari has received great customer reviews, and is being used by companies from over 90 countries around the world. The company has also been awarded several times. Calamari received otrzymało dwie HR software awards from Finances Online. In 2017 Calamari also received Rising Star Award and Great User Experience Award.
Currently the Calamari team is dynamically developing its integration with Slack and is working for introducing many improvements in the mobile application for even greater convenience of use and security in the difficult time of a corona-virus pandemic. The company is also creating a voice interface for recording breaks to ensure contactless solutions.
As it turns out, even within the same mobile device, the built-in voice interface for different languages works differently and creates problems. We are currently in the testing phase, but we are thinking of creating our own solution that will prevent them - says the founding team at Calamari explaining the problems the team is facing while creating the voice interface.
Author: Chayanika Goswami
Source : https://startuptalky.com/calamari-success-story/
Date : 2020-09-09T12:07:55.000Z