About

OKOAPP has been created as the answer for urgent needs and has quickly become a main tool.

Says Mariusz Stefaniak, creator of OKO app.

I am the owner of a small IT company, which I founded in 2009. I focused on bespoke software delivery which quickly brought the company growth and its first employees. The next stage (from OKO point of view) came in 2016, when the market demand for programmers grew (also in my company). I began hiring specialists from all over the world. Soon, it turned out that it wasn’t as easy as I thought – mainly because of the lack of control of remote employees. I needed a tool which would help me to keep control of the work, its progression and effects as a function of investment.

Benjamin Franklin once said: “The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.” So, I sat down and in few days I created the first version of OKO (In my mother tongue, OKO means “the eye”). Now I could keep my eye on what was happening in my company.

For a long time, OKO was solely an internal tool and has been developing to meet with the company’s needs. It quickly turned out that with OKO, we could monitor the progress of projects, calculate payroll and so on. I could instantly know which employees show good engagement in their work, who I need to award, and which ones I don’t – those I have to motivate. OKO has always done a great job, which cannot be overstated.

The idea to commercialize OKO came quite unexpectedly. One day, I was talking to my friends and just told them a story about OKO and showed it to them. They were surprised by the brilliant idea, but I was surprised when a friend of mine asked, “Why don’t you sell the license?” That was an impulse, and the trigger which caused quick action. As a result, a new commercial version of OKO was born.

Of course, commercializing OKO wasn’t easy at all. I had to foresee and program a number of features, which I didn’t need when OKO was an internal tool, but it had value for the money.

Today, OKO delivers a number of features and its use goes far beyond ordinary monitoring of employees, and discovering who works really hard and who doesn’t.

One of the main uses of OKO is project monitoring. In my company, I have faced situations where I wasn’t sure whether a signed customer contract was going to be profitable. The solution turned out to be easy – use OKO. Today, OKO monitors work and uses its intelligence to automatically recognize which project to be assigned to. Thanks to this, I know when I need to re-negotiate a contract with my customer, and when to work harder for the customer to deliver work that he pays for.

OKO also works for freelancers and other independent specialists. It’s a great idea to show to a customer how much time was spent working on their project, but it’s also a great tool to see how much we generally work before becoming workaholics.

Finally – I can’t stress this enough – it’s a perfect tool for motivating people. Now, you can base your actions on facts (instead of guesses) and reward those employees who are really engaged.

I think that if Benjamin Franklin had seen OKO, he would say: "I told you so!” OKO makes the manager’s life easier.

Today, OKO is a recognized and valued tool, and I’m proud that it was born out of my company.