How Europe’s Epicflow Is About To End The Project Planning Nightmare

Time. The most fundamental element that we have in modern society, everything follows a specific sequence in time. It can be a very abstract concept; we all as humans seek for time, because we want to make the most out of our lives. When it turns to business there is no better known expression than “Time Is Money”.

Resource Management: The Trait Of The Future

Due to this I see Resource Management, more precisely Time Management as a core need for the future. With all ongoing innovation we see new jobs being created and old ones being taken over by technology, but there will always be work for humans too.

One thing that is hard for humans, and also for machines, is scheduling. The advantage of machines is that they don’t act outside of their developed algorithm, they are just built to work, humans on the other hand are created to live, with work being just a subset of “living life”.

So in order to live a better life things must be well timed, even more importantly in startups. We don’t want our employees overloaded with work – in my opinion modern companies want a good comradeship, creativity and an understanding of the company’s culture and vision.

Fitting Work Into Our Schedules

In this line of thought I present a startup with experience in consulting since 2007 and continuous evolution through a scientific way. Their objective is to identify the better way to fit work in our available time. So two years ago four people from different industries, but with equal interest in this area, joined and created Epicflow.

Epicflow provides a priority system, enabling companies to create better workload views and measure their output in a dynamic multi-project environment – insights that are crucial for project management. Their core feature is called Future Load Graph, where project management experts can see how a new additional project would affect the workload and capacity of their team.

All this data is presented in a SaaS platform, integrating the current PM environment (MS Project, Jira, Primavera, Trimergo, etc.) and prioritizing tasks based on demand (the right task prioritization), continuously tracking and solving bottlenecks (the lack of resources or overloading).

Aiming For A Share In A €4.17bln Market

“In 2015 this market had a valuation of 2.38 billion Euros, with 30 million users. The trends indicate that by 2020 the size of the market will increase and reach 50 million users, and will be valued with 4.17 billion Euros” & according to Yuri Warczynski from Epicflow – “our goal is to reach 0.1% of these users by 2020”.

To reach this goal the team first opted for a soft launch and are now, after reaching breakeven, about to go for their hard launch. In terms of investing, when questioned about how the strategy would change if Series A funding was received, Epicflow pointed the focus in the direction of releasing their product to the public. With invesment at hand they would certainly increase the number of team members and improve their product with more features as well as create new ones for different industries. Epicflow’s revenue model is based on a subscription fee, depending on the amount of resources used. In other words Epicflow aims to expierence viral growth, and as a first step to tackle this challenge decided to join Web Summit Lisbon 2016.

Epicflow consitutes of two teams, one based in the Netherlands with a focus on the science behind the product, and the other one based in Ukraine, responsible for the development. The motivational fuel that keeps the remote team working on their vision every day is their products & the reactions their customers show toward them – “the best reward is the feeling of ensuring to provide a good and useful product”, as Yuri Warczynski sums up.

 

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