Berlin-based Workist has just announced a €9 million capital boost for its AI-enables platform that is freeing up administrative burden and making document processing a whole lot simpler. The SaaS startup is now planning to expand, taking its automation tool to global B2B companies.
Processing paperwork is an inevitable part of business and managing that paperwork is notoriously a tedious task. While the world has gone digital, much of this admin work is still done manually taking up a lot of time from a lot of people to get the job done.
But, perhaps not for much longer. Berlin-based Workist wants to make this process automated and fit for the digital era. The startup has now got a new capital injection of €9 million to develop the product.
Tim Wegner: “Similar to the steam engine in the 18th century, AI will lead to a veritable explosion in the automation of human labour – but this time of office work. With Workist, companies can significantly increase their efficiency and leverage the potential of AI today.”
Funding details
The Series A funding was led by Earlybird Venture Capital. It takes Workist’s total funding raised to €12 million, counting 468 Capital, LEA Partners and another.vc as backers.
The new funding will be used to strengthen the product and technology team and expand the range of applications.
Automating B2B transactions
The Berlin-based team is on a mission to automate all the document processing aspects to B2B transactions. Workist’s AI software, WorKL, is able to understand business documents such as purchase orders, invoices and delivery bills and automatically processes all relevant information to fully automate commercial transactions.
B2B transactions, such as incoming orders, which form the basis for global trade, are steadily increasing. However, even today, these are still heavily dominated by manual work. Thousands of people in Germany alone are spending their entire work day manually typing data from incoming documents such as PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, e-mails and faxes into internal IT systems.
It’s something that obviously takes up precious time, but it also costs money – a reported €270 billion worldwide every year.
At the same time, a shortage of skilled workers and a lack of personnel are demanding ever greater automation of business processes.
Workist aims to change this using AI to enhance automation and making business processes more efficient and cost-effective. . In addition, there is the high learning effect of the AI, which allows the automation rate to increase more and more with increasing deployment time. Workist’s solution is easy to implement, especially for mid-sized companies, and compatible with numerous ERP and CRM systems, as well as other enterprise IT software. Workist has grown to over 50 customers and seven-figure revenue in just two years.
Alexander Müller and Dr. Fabian Brosig: “With Workist’s solution, incoming documents can be processed completely automatically and without manual typing, regardless of the format. Workist fits elegantly into existing processes and is compatible with all common enterprise IT systems, creating a kind of intelligent link between ERP systems at different companies.”
Already the company’s solution is trusted by the likes of Deutsche Bahn, PepsiCo, Zentis, and Brennenstuhl. The plan now is to strengthen the product and technology team and expand the range of applications.
Dr. Andre Retterath, Partner at Earlybird: “The increase in international trade transactions between companies so far has always led to an increase in tedious, repetitive manual work. The Workist team is poised to change this and replace manual document processing in B2B transactions, fundamentally changing the way businesses interact globally. Workist explicitly targets the often overlooked small and medium-sized companies that are global market leaders and sell their products internationally. We look forward to seeing how Workist revolutionizes the way businesses communicate with each other.”
