Grow wants to unify sprawling cloud data sources
A new startup called Grow Inc. hit the industry radar on Tuesday after raising $1.5 million in funding to launch a platform that attempts to unify data from different corners of the cloud into a complete view of operations for small- and medium-sized businesses. Such a solution is long overdue.
Between the continuous stream of social sentiment about their brands and the countless services promising to take the hassle out of everyday chores, organizations have never had more choices for improving their businesses, but the task of assembling disparate parts into a single view of the business takes time that few people have.
Vendors such as Salesforce.com Inc. are actively working toward removing the barriers within their ecosystems, but integration across vendor or technology boundaries remains difficult. Grow says it will address the challenge with a library of pre-assembled metrics embedded into its service that make it possible to pull data from a broad spectrum of third party sources – including social networks, spreadsheets tools and almost everything in between – on a drag-and-drop basis.
Once the information is inside the system, users can start consolidating the various performance indicators into charts, tables and graphs that connect the dots between the different services into a more complete picture of business. That may include correlating salesperson performance recorded in Salesforce with financial data from a month-end spreadsheet to identify the most successful outreach tactics, mapping online engagement to revenue and practically any other pattern that a manager might come up with.
Grow is available immediately starting at $39 per user per month in four editions that range from a single dashboard to unlimited visualizations. The startup is primarily targeting SMBs with between 10 and 200 employees, a somewhat overlooked market that it plans to spend the $1.5 million infusion unlocking. The funding includes contributions from Kickstart Seed Fund. Pelion Ventures and developer training powerhouse Pluralsight Inc. CEO Aaron Skonnard, among others.
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