A few years before Microsoft Corp. jumped into workflow automation with Flow, a group of company veterans led by former software architect Nikhil Hasija banded together to pursue their own vision for addressing this market. Their startup, Azuqua Inc., today said it has raised $10.8 million from a consortium led by Insight Venture Partners.

The team will use the capital to expand customer acquisition efforts and develop new features for their cloud service. Like Flow, Azuqua enables users to create workflows for automating tasks that involve multiple applications, such as syncing customer data from Dropbox to Salesforce.com. What sets it apart is the fact that companies can expand the core feature set with integration options specifically tailored for their employees. 

Azuqua aims to combine the customizability of the advanced integration tools sold by the likes of TIBCO Software Inc. with the simplicity that has made IFTTT, Zapier and the other market leaders so popular. What enables the startup’s service to balance the two is a straightforward workflow designer that abstracts the underlying complexity. The custom features that a company implements are exposed as visual interface elements that don’t require users to concern themselves with the code behind the curtains.

The service can be used to automate a wide range of tasks. A firm looking to help its sales team become more productive, for instance, might add tailor-made data conversion options to take the hassle out of syncing lead profiles between analytics systems. The platform also provides the ability to trigger alerts and automated actions in response to events with business significance.

Some workers might be interested in doing something as simple as generating a Slack alert when a new customer is brought aboard, while savvier users can create complex workflows that involve several different applications. A company’s development team in turn may tailor the workflow designer for each group to optimize productivity.

Azuqua said its service has been adopted by more than 150 organizations over the past year. Among them are General Motors Co., AirBnB Inc. and General Electric Co.’s software group.

Image: Azuqua