Flowingly raises $4.5m for automation, workflow efficiency

NZ-based software company Flowingly has raised $4.5 million in Pre-Series A funding, which the company says it will use to continue its global expansion.

The process mapping and workflow automation platform says it allows client-facing employees without coding or IT experience to easily map, customise and automate simple to complex workflow processes and integrate with other business tools.

Additionally, the company's platform intends to drive digital transformation across government, education, healthcare, manufacturing and enterprise organisations, and the company is now backed by operational investors and trusted by over 100,000 users worldwide.

The Pre-Series A funding was led by VC firm GD1, with participation from Icehouse Ventures, and Flowingly will use the funding to grow the business globally, with a core focus on the US market.

Kalaugher, who previously founded Naverisk in 2009 and helped it achieve significant financial success, founded Flowingly in 2016.

"Our mission is to help businesses around the world transform old, manual ways of working into modern digital experiences," Flowingly founder and CEO Jon Kalaugher says.

"While process mapping and workflow automation may not be a new concept to large enterprises who have invested in technologies that help improve process flow across their massive organisations, mid-market businesses have significantly lagged their transition into digital transformation.

"We want to empower all parts and functions of a mid-market business to join the no-code movement so they can better delight their customers and team members."

Flowingly says that the trouble with many digital transformation tool vendors available today is that they tend to miss out mid-market businesses with 100 to 3,000 employees, instead opting to focus on larger companies and IT-specific use cases.

The company adds that these low-code platforms are often big, clunky legacy solutions or piecemeal tools that provide value to specific teams within a larger organisation. The few tools that have been developed for the mid-market are technically complex and solely owned by IT, often to the detriment of agile process automation efforts.

Flowingly says its straightforward, no-code platform affords users to automate their workflows and process maps in as little as 30 minutes, without depending on IT to set up and maintain.

Now, customer-facing, frontline workers can carry out their usual activities and integrate with all the other line-of-business systems and tools they already use.

"Flowingly is eliminating wasted time across the entire business [allowing for] less stress [and] improved productivity," Compliance - Risk at Skill Hire general manager David Richards says.

"The best person to create a workflow in a particular area of the business is the person closest to that process, who understands the intricacies and quirks. This person will generally not have coding experience and may also have limited IT experience.

"Flowingly's drag and drop process building means any non-technical employee can customise and automate their workflows and become "citizen developers".

Flowingly's platform has quickly gained traction and become integral to businesses, with customers already using it throughout New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the US (including a Fortune 100 company).

As a result, Flowingly is set to more than triple its revenue in 2022 and plans to double its employee headcount due to its deeper expansion into the US and beyond.

"We were hugely impressed by Jon's background and leadership experience not only as an entrepreneur but also in governance, having previously held board positions with Cin7 and AskNicely," GD1 co-managing partner John Kells says.

"Through Naverisk, Jon clearly understands customer challenges around inefficient, repetitive workflows and has done an incredible job building and scaling Flowingly as an institutional quality platform without taking external investment.

"There are very few truly no-code platforms, but Jon and his team have a clear and relentless obsession with customer experience excellence, which is demonstrated by early product/market fit underpinned by a global footprint of top tier customers."

Flowingly notes that business process and workflow automation is a vast and rapidly growing market. As companies utilise more software, the opportunity to automate workflows grows exponentially.

It adds that automating processes allows businesses to save money and reallocates scarce IT and developer resources on value-additive or client-facing work.

Taking the median of various studies, the market size is forecast to grow to around NZ$80 billion by 2027.

"We are building a new category, company-wide workflow automation. The days of businesses' automation efforts being hamstrung by traditional IT owned workflow tools are over.

"Flowingly truly democratises workflow automation and is proving to be a game changer for our clients," Kalaugher says.