Workflow intelligence startup Tango Technology Inc. is hoping to transform process documentation for sales teams and create more opportunities for collaboration after landing $5.7 million in a seed funding round.

Wing Venture Capital led the round, which also saw participation from General Catalyst, Global Silicon Valley, Outsiders Fund and Red Sea Ventures. Angel investors Michael Stoppelmen, senior vice president of engineering at Yelp Inc., Jai Ranganathan, former head of data at Uber Technologies Inc., and Shoaib Makani, chief executive of KeepTruckin Inc., also participated in the round.

Tango has attracted a lot of interest because it has created what it calls a workflow intelligence platform that eliminates the need for workers to create documentation while performing various business tasks. At the same time, it provides companies with insights into workflows that can be used to standardize on best practices, onboard and train new staff, and improve employee performance.

The company’s platform comes in the form of a simple Chrome Extension that integrates into existing tools. Then, it quickly sets about capturing workflow best practices by taking screenshots and transcribing actions an URLs as employees get on with their tasks. Once it has learned the best way to perform a certain tasks, it weaves what it has learned into easy to understand, step-by-step tutorials that can be used to teach and train others.

Tango said creating internal workflow documentation is a burdensome task, and that by doing this automatically, it can save companies a ton of hassle.

Workflow documentation is necessary for many organizations. Tango cites a McKinsey study that shows employees typically spend as much as 20% of their workweek searching for information or tracking down a colleague to help them complete a task. As such, it says, documenting internal workflows is paramount to the success of any organization.

So far, Tango’s focus has been on customer support and sales enablement teams since these departments typically require more training because of their higher turnover of staff. And training new staff has only been made more difficult by the COVID-19 pandemic and remote work.

Tango co-founder and Chief Executive Ken Babcock, who previously worked on Uber’s data analytics team, told SiliconANGLE the platform was tightly focused on internal training and upskilling as opposed to workflow automation. This, he said, paves the way for workflow enablement and workflow intelligence.

He added that Tango was inspired by what the revenue intelligence firm Gong.io Inc. had done on the audio side, listening in to salespeople’s calls with customers and analyzing those interactions to suggest ways they can improve. “We’re looking to follow that blueprint for digital workflows,” Babcock said.

It’s sorely needed, he argued, because most sales enablement managers these days spend hours laboring away to create documentation around process adherence. And that documentation quickly becomes old and needs to be updated as workflows evolve.

“Today, lots of documentation becomes stale even after using screenshotting tools, LMS/Wikis, and video recorders,” Babcock said. “Tango consolidates that tooling and creates documentation as the process is being performed.”

The CEO said Tango shouldn’t be confused with robotic process automation, which aims to automate workflows, though he did say that he could envision a future where its platform might be able to intervene, for example by suggesting the best next step in a process.

“So for instance, it might say, ‘You’ve been capturing with Tango and we noticed you just completed the following steps — here’s what most of your colleagues do next,'” he explained.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said enterprises are dealing with so much workflow process automation these days that the documentation is seriously lagging behind.

“That’s not a surprise as no one wants to sit down and write it,” he said. “Luckily, because of AI software and cheap compute resources in the cloud, the documentation side can also now be automated. That’s the challenge Tango is taking on with by recording and observing people as they work. Funding is one thing though, and developing a platform capable of changing the way we work is quite another, so we will have to wait and see how big an impact it makes.”

Tango said its platform will be available in public beta later this month.

Image: Tango