FortressIQ Inc., the maker of an operational improvement platform that uses machine learning to observe and recommend improvements to business processes, today announced it has raised $30 million in a new funding round.

The Series B round was led by Microsoft Corp.’s M12 venture fund and Tiger Global Management LLC. It comes nearly 18 months after the company raised a $12 million Series A round and brings total funding to $46 million. Microsoft’s participation comes a few months after the companies announced a partnership and subsequently FortressIQ’s integration with Microsoft Power Automate.

FortressIQ automates the process of creating a detailed map of every process across every application and department in a company that operations manager can use to streamline processes. The software uses machine learning to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies where automation can be applied.

The company’s novel approach captures video recordings of screen interactions and then analyzes the video streams to turn screen interactions “into a time and motion study,” said Pankaj Chowdhry (pictured), founder and chief executive of FortressIQ. “We take streams and aggregate them across multiple users, then use machine learning to look at processes while filtering out noise.”

Unlike robotic process automation, the hot category of software that mimics the interactions between human and computer, FortressIQ’s approach has “no integration requirements and universal compatibility,” Chowdhry said. “A lot of the RPA vendors look at log files to figure out a process. We go one step further and create the log files. If a human can see it, we can see it.”

Results can range from a process map to analytics about which steps take longest in a process. The software can whitelist and blacklist applications to filter out noise such as Facebook interactions and “can deploy and protect privacy even better than human-based processes,” Chowdhry said. “It’s about taking a process and showing how it works.”

Fortress already has some large enterprise customers and plans to spend the new funds on product improvements and building out its partner network. Earlier investors who participated in the Series B round include BOLDstart Ventures Management LLC, Comcast Ventures LLC, Eniac Ventures Management LLC and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Photo: FortressIQ