Astound, a Start-up Company, Draws Investors For Automating Employee Help Desks

Astound, an enterprise software company that sells automated help desk solutions, has raised $15.5 million in its second funding round since its launch in early 2018.

Astound simplifies how employees at major corporations get help for IT issues as well as the procedures used by service teamsOpens a new window to resolve the issues quickly and minimize employee downtime. The aim of the software is for office workers to handle their own service issuesOpens a new window without assistance from specialized IT techs.

Astound’s artificial intelligence platform integrates with service management systems such as ServiceNow, BMC, Jira, Cherwell and Workday. As well as automating routine tasks with virtual support agents, Astound improves accuracy across the service cycle by making service agents smarter with contextual recommendations.

“At Astound, we’re proud to be introducing the world of work to the transformative power of systems of intelligence,” co-founder Dan Turchin wrote in a blog postOpens a new window , adding: “We’re proud to be disrupting 30 years of manual processes in the call center. We’re proud to be reinventing the service experience for everyone who has ever called the help desk.”

Turchin, with 20 years of experience in the employee service sector and previously at ServiceNow, says the new funds will be used to accelerate innovation and hire staff. “We  started Astound to guarantee every employee benefits from the shortest path to the best answer,” he said. “It’s our vision to make employees love work and make every service provider better than they thought they’d ever be.”

The company’s product line-up includes four apps targeting specific areas:

• Answers, an autonomous virtual agent, uses natural language processing and natural language understanding to help employees ask questions, report incidents, and order goods and services via apps such as Slack and Skype.
• Advise helps support agents to research required information from a company’s system of record.
• Predict automatically assigns incidents to the appropriate recipient.
• Analyze provides analytics to managers to make better decisions about where to allocate resources, vendor relationships and budgets.

Astound’s Series B fundingOpens a new window  was led by March Capital, with participation by earlier investors including Vertex Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Moment Ventures and the Slack Fund. The start-up has raised a total of $27 million since it was founded.

Sumant Mandal, managing director of March Capital, explained why the firm chose Astound.  “We invest in bold entrepreneurs pursuing big outcomes with the potential for explosive growth,” he said, “and Astound delivers on all fronts. While the customer service industry has begun to capitalize on the promise of AI, only Astound has extended this potential to deliver the fastest and most intelligent employee customer service.”

“We see Astound as becoming the key to unlocking the potential for enterprises to link efficient internal support with increased employee satisfaction and productivity, better business outcomes, and higher profitability across the enterprise,” he said.

Astound’s corporate customers include McDonald’s and Adidas. The Austin-based start-up doubled its customer base over the last year, and recently added a major insurance company as a customer.

Additionally, it formed partnerships with managed service providers and system integrators to keep up with the demand in the market.

One such partnership is with General Dynamics Information Technology which says it now provides better customer service for a fraction of the cost using Astound’s apps. “We are constantly searching for the latest innovative technologies and new ways to solve problems for our customers,” said Yogesh Khanna, chief technology officer for General Dynamics. “Our work with Astound showcases how artificial intelligence and machine learning can provide new solutions for federal employees, soldiers and veterans.”

Astound cites a report by McKinseyOpens a new window , which looks at the potential for bots, algorithms and artificial intelligence to reshape corporate IT support functions. It predicts that as technologies such as robotic process automation mature, more tasks done by employees will be shifted to bots and algorithms.

“Our experience shows that companies following a systematic approach to tech-enabled transformation can reap substantial efficiency gains in their general and administrative functions,” the report says. It adds that corporations  using enterprise resource planning systems can cut costs by 5% to 10% in as little as 18 months and that long-term savings are anticipated to exceed more than 30%.

The McKinsey report predicts that 70% of corporations will use at least one AI-based solution by 2030 and that the automated solutions would contribute as much as $120 billion in global gross domestic product.