With the explosive adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, the average company now has more than 100 SaaS applications to manage—leaving data locked across countless different systems. That makes analysis challenging. After all, according to Forrester, 60% to 73% of all data in an organization is unused for analytics.
Ideally, analysts need something that connects disparate enterprise systems, such as business intelligence and analytics tools. But these tools are often complex and uninformed, leading employees to spend hours every day searching and gathering information. To find the answer, Navnet Loyal teamed up with former e-commerce app founder Tommy Chi to build Coefficient, an app that brings live data into Google Sheets and other existing spreadsheet platforms.
“Tsai and I have worked on consumer technologies for many years, and we saw a huge opportunity to bring consumer-grade experiences to companies,” Loywal told TechCrunch in an email interview. Loywal was previously a software developer at Google working on AdWords, while Tsai was an early engineer at location-sharing smartphone app Loopt. “Most data products are designed for the technical user, resulting in a poor user experience and low adoption for business users. We want to bring the power of technical products to the business user with the simplicity they expect in the user’s life.”
To that end, Coefficient — which closed an $18 million Series A funding round today — is designed to reduce the number of manual, repetitive tasks business users must complete every day by referencing data across systems. The platform is based on Google Sheets (with upcoming Excel support), bringing data from customer relationship management (CRMs) systems, SQL databases and other SaaS tools.
Using Coefficient, users can create, share and automate live reports, set alerts and write data to connected SaaS devices. The template gallery provides ready-made spreadsheet dashboards for common reports used by business teams (think team KPIs, leadership dashboards, and revenue analytics) that integrate with existing data systems to let users animate all the charts in their spreadsheets with live data. .
Coefficient’s spreadsheet more. Image Credits: Coefficient
“Business users are more technical than anywhere else in a spreadsheet, yet business teams are often forced to use archaic methods to manage data – requesting frequent updates from data-savvy technical teams or exporting raw data from a dashboard or CRM for recurring reporting, manual analysis, group Reducing efficiency and productivity,” Loywal said. “Coefficient’s products extend advanced, connected data and analytics to business users, enabling businesses to become more self-sufficient by connecting real-time to the data they’re working with in their source systems: spreadsheets.”
It’s a lot to promise. And to be sure, Coefficient isn’t the first to try this sort of thing. Startups like Airtable and Smartsheet already offer spreadsheet-like UIs for organizing business data. Others have tried to put their own spin on things like spreadsheets with apps and spreadsheets with granular access controls.
In fact, at first glance, Coefficient looks a lot like Actiondesk, as it connects to databases, CRMs, and SaaS tools to feed data directly into Excel and Google Sheets spreadsheets. Like Coefficient, Actiondesk supports common formulas and provides templates to get you started.
But to its credit, Coefficient is off to a good start — Loyal says Zendesk, Spotify, Foursquare, Contentful and Miro are among its clients. Combined, tens of thousands of people are currently using the platform.
“We’re seeing our customers increase their contracts with us even as they’re cutting back – a testament to the value of making business teams more efficient,” said Loywal. “With more remote work and a more complex economic climate, companies want their employees to be more independent.”
Loywal said the proceeds from the Series A will be used to expand Coefficient’s product offerings and “expand global operations.” In the coming months, the startup plans to add new SaaS system integrations and expand the scope of reporting automation tools.
Battery Ventures led Coefficient’s Series A with participation from Foundation Capital and S28 Capital. So far, the company has raised $24.7 million in capital.
Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner at Battery Ventures, added, “The Coffiff team is a testament to the brand’s expertise in becoming consumer evangelists and driving product adoption across the organization… High performance is a critical asset in an unpredictable macroeconomic environment.”
