{"id":24955,"date":"2021-06-22T06:19:52","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T06:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/datarails-books-25m-more-to-build-better-financial-reporting-tools-for-smbs.html"},"modified":"2021-06-22T06:19:52","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T06:19:52","slug":"datarails-books-25m-more-to-build-better-financial-reporting-tools-for-smbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/datarails-books-25m-more-to-build-better-financial-reporting-tools-for-smbs.html","title":{"rendered":"DataRails books $25M more to build better financial reporting tools for SMBs"},"content":{"rendered":"

As enterprise startups continue to target interesting gaps in the market, we\u2019re seeing increasingly sophisticated tools getting built for small and medium businesses \u2014 traditionally a tricky segment to sell to, too small for large enterprise tools, and too advanced in their needs for consumer products. In the latest development of that trend, an Israeli startup called DataRails<\/a> has raised $25 million to continue building out a platform that lets SMBs use Excel to run financial planning and analytics like their larger counterparts.<\/p>\n

The funding closes out the company\u2019s Series A at $43.5 million, after the company initially raised $18.5 million in April<\/a> (some at the time reported this as its Series A, but it seems the round had yet to be completed). The full round includes Zeev Ventures, Vertex Ventures Israel and Innovation Endeavors, with Vintage Investment Partners added in this most recent tranche. DataRails is not disclosing its valuation, except to note that it has doubled in the last four months, with hundreds of customers and on target to cross 1,000 this year, with a focus on the North American market. It has raised $55 million in total.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge that DataRails has identified is that on one hand, SMBs have started to adopt a lot more apps, including software delivered as a service, to help them manage their businesses \u2014 a trend that has been accelerated in the last year with the pandemic and the knock-on effect that has had for remote working and bringing more virtual elements to replace face-to-face interactions. Those apps can include Salesforce, NetSuite, Sage, SAP, QuickBooks, Zuora, Xero, ADP and more.<\/p>\n

But on the other hand, those in the business who manage finances and financial reporting are lacking the tools to look at the data from these different apps in a holistic way. While Excel is a default application for many of them, they are simply reading lots of individual spreadsheets rather than integrated data analytics based on the numbers.<\/p>\n

DataRails has built a platform that can read the reported information, which typically already lives in Excel spreadsheets, and automatically translate it into a bigger picture view of the company.<\/p>\n

For SMEs, Excel is such a central piece of software, yet such a pain point for its lack of extensibility and function, that this predicament was actually the germination of starting DataRails in the first place,<\/p>\n

Didi Gurfinkel, the CEO who co-founded the company with Eyal Cohen (the CPO) said that DataRails initially set out to create a more general-purpose product that could help analyze and visualize anything from Excel.<\/p>\n

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Image: DataRails<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started the company with a vision to save the world from Excel spreadsheets,\u201d he said, by taking them and helping to connect the data contained within them to a structured database. \u201cThe core of our technology knows how to take unstructured data and map that to a central database.\u201d Before 2020, DataRails (which was founded in 2015) applied this to a variety of areas with a focus on banks, insurance companies, compliance and data integrity.<\/p>\n

Over time, it could see a very specific application emerging, specifically for SMEs: providing a platform for FPA (financial planning and analytics), which didn\u2019t really have a solution to address it at the time. \u201cSo we enabled that to beat the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re already investing so much time and money in their software, but they still don\u2019t have analytics and insight,\u201d said Gurfinkel.<\/p>\n

That turned out to be fortunate timing, since \u201cdigital transformation\u201d and getting more out of one\u2019s data was really starting to get traction in the world of business, specifically in the world of SMEs<\/a>, and CFOs and other people who oversaw finances were already looking for something like this.<\/p>\n

The typical DataRails customer might be as small as a business of 50 people, or as big as 1,000 employees, a size of business that is too small for enterprise solutions, \u201cwhich can cost tens of thousands of dollars to implement and use,\u201d added Cohen, among other challenges. But as with so many of the apps that are being built today to address those using Excel, the idea with DataRails is low-code or even more specifically no-code, which means \u201cno IT in the loop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we are so successful,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are crossing the barrier and making our solution easy to use.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company doesn\u2019t have a huge number of competitors today, either, although companies like Cube<\/a> (which also recently raised some money<\/a>) are among them. And others like Stripe, while currently not focusing on FPA, have most definitely been expanding the tools that it is providing to businesses as part of their bigger play to manage payments and subsequently other processes related to financial activity, so perhaps it, or others like it, might at some point become competitors in this space as well.<\/p>\n

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Cube raises $10M more to help companies plan their financial future<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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In the meantime, Gurfinkel said that other areas that DataRails is likely to expand to cover alongside FPA include HR, inventory and \u201cplanning for anything,\u201d any process that you have running in Excel. Another interesting turn would be how and if DataRails decides to look beyond Excel at other spreadsheets, or bypass spreadsheets altogether.<\/p>\n

The scope of the opportunity \u2014 in the U.S. alone there are more than 30 million small businesses \u2014 is what\u2019s attracting the investment here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to reinvest in DataRails and continue working with the team to help them navigate their recent explosive and rapid growth,\u201d said Yanai Oron, general partner at Vertex Ventures, in a statement<\/span>. \u201cWith innovative yet accessible technology and a tremendous untapped market opportunity, DataRails is primed to scale and become the leading FPA solution for SMEs everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBusinesses are constantly about to start, in the midst of, or have just finished a round of financial reporting \u2014 it\u2019s a never-ending cycle,\u201d added Oren Zeev, founding partner at Zeev Ventures. \u201cBut with DataRails, FPA can be simple, streamlined, and effective, and that\u2019s a vision we\u2019ll back again and again.\u201d
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With the right tools, predicting startup revenue is possible<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/suq8K5xehn0\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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