Agiloft Inc., a company that specializes in no-code contract and commerce lifecycle management, today said it raised $45 million in growth equity investment.

It’s the first round of external funding the company has raised since its founding in 1991. The company also named former Thomson Reuters Corp. executive Eric Laughlin as chief executive. He becomes only the company’s second CEO, succeeding founder Colin Earl.

Laughlin was most recently global leader of legal managed services at Ernst & Young LLP, where he managed the Pangea3 and Riverview Law teams and provided contract, e-discovery and compliance services. Earl remains with the company as chief technology officer.

Agiloft said the funding will be used to expand its position in its current market, accelerate artificial intelligence-based product development and expand its vertical industry and geographic scope. The company has been bootstrapped since inception and is profitable.

Agiloft believes it’s at the intersection of two growth markets. Enterprise content lifecycle management addresses one of the most paper-bound functions in most organizations, making it ripe for overhaul during the pandemic. Gartner Inc. has said that effective contract management is “important for the commercial success of any business” and Forrester Research Inc. pegs market growth at 18% annually.

Agiloft’s software is also built on a no-code platform, meaning that organizations can customize contract and commerce workflows using drag-and-drop metaphors. The company uses machine learning to cut intake and organization steps as well as to identify the level of risk in documents and clauses.

Gartner has forecast that “by 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity” and Forrester expects the market to top $21 billion by 2022, up from $4 billion in 2018 and driven by “the potential to make software development as much as 10 times faster than traditional methods.”

Agiloft said the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated demand as enterprises seeking clarification on contractual obligations struggle with paper records that are nearly inaccessible. It reported 134% growth in new sales thus far this year off an unspecified base.

The funding was provided by FTV Management Co LP’s FTV Capital arm. Alex Mason and Abhay Puskoor of FTV’s enterprise technology and services group will join the company’s board.

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