Business management software company FlowForma has raised €4 million as it aims to build on its success in the “no code” software market, creating 70 jobs in the next three years and focusing on growing the US market.
The round, which was raised from new and existing investors, will be used to fund the expansion of the company, with Fenergo co-founder and chief executive Marc Murphy, Ergo co-founder John Purdy and Pádraig Canavan, founder of Singularity, all investing further. Colm Heffernan, former chief operating officer of Fenergo, has also backed the round and has been appointed chairman.
FlowForma, spun of out of Ergo in 2016, was formed to bring digitisation “to the masses”, chief executive Olivia Bushe said, particularly smaller companies that cannot afford to spend seven figures on business process management software. It is used by a number of industries, including construction, healthcare and financial services, and champions the low-code approach that helps business units design and build their own workflows.
The funding will be split evenly between sales and marketing and developing its next-generation product.
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FlowForma’s workforce is set to grow significantly, rising to 100 in the coming three years as the company recruits staff across sales, development, marketing and customer service.
It is also planning further expansion in the US market, where it already has a presence. The company is also opening an incubator space in Enterprise Ireland’s New York office, with FlowForma set to target the US construction sector.
Ms Bushe said an existing member of the sales team would be sent over to the US in September. “It’s nice way to step into that presence on the ground there,” she said.
The company has a next-generation product scheduled for release towards the end of the year, which will make it more independent of Microsoft 365 and Sharepoint. While it will still integrate with the Microsoft system, it will also work outside of it. “It’ll be a transition,” Ms Bushe said. “We don’t want to leave any of our customers behind. We’ll bring everyone with us.”
FlowForma has seen growth of 26 per cent in its most recent financial year, which ended in March. That has been attributed to the pandemic, which accelerated significantly digital transformation plans for companies.
Pre-Covid, the market for its services was very different, Ms Bushe said. “A lot of time you spent educating people on what no code was, what low code was; people didn’t understand it, the market wasn’t very mature. We were almost ahead of the time,” she said. “But Covid hit and I knew it was going to be a catalyst for our market because paper processes were broken, hybrid working was needed.
“I could see during Covid, I knew that once the markets freed up again … the demand for our product would be increased just given the state the world was in.”
Another catalyst for the company’s growth is the ongoing shortage of IT skills, and the expense involved in hiring the right IT resources.
“Our product is for business users. We teach people through the onboarding to become self-sufficient, so they don’t need to hire expensive IT resources; they can make the changes themselves,” Ms Bushe said. “That’s a big thing, because at the moment especially it’s really hard to get any kind of IT people; there’s a real shortage of skills and if you can get them they’re really expensive.”
