Flatfile Inc., a startup focused on making it easier for software companies to process their customers’ data, today announced that it has closed a $50 million funding round led by Tiger Global.

The Series B round also included contributions from Google LLC, enterprise software maker Workday Inc. and Scale Ventures. A number of angel investors participated as well.

Companies frequently require the ability to upload business data to software-as-a-service applications. A retailer, for example, might seek to upload sales logs to a cloud-based sales analytics application in order to predict future customer demand. A delivery company may wish to load package details into a supply chain management platform.

Uploading data to a cloud application can be a time-consuming process for organizations. Often, cloud applications require uploaded data to be formatted in a specific way. As a result, organizations must often change the formatting of their data to meet the application’s requirements, a task that involves a significant amount of manual work.

Flatfile has developed a cloud-based platform called Portal that speeds up the process. According to the startup, the platform reduces the amount of time needed to upload data by as much as 50%. It does so by automatically detecting and resolving common types of technical issues that emerge during the data upload process. 

Portal detects if the data that a user loads into a cloud application doesn’t meet the application’s requirements. For example, an application that processes spreadsheets containing transaction logs may require that each transaction log be organized in a separate row. Flatfile’s Portal platform can detect if a user uploads a spreadsheet that doesn’t store transaction logs in separate rows.

The platform also uncovers more fine-grained issues. Portal can detect when a spreadsheet is missing columns, as well as determine if numerical values were placed in a section of a spreadsheet meant to store text. Flatfile says that Portal is capable of uncovering many other types of errors as well.

After detecting formatting issues in a spreadsheet, Portal automatically reorganizes the spreadsheet to resolve them. The platform can, among other things, add spreadsheet columns, change capital letters in a text snippet to lowercase letters and remove unnecessary data points.

Software companies embed Portal into their cloud applications to help users more easily upload data. According to Flatfile, Portal provides a self-service interface that enables an application’s users to upload files without extensive manual work. Software companies can customize the interface according to their requirements. 

The datasets that users load into cloud applications are in some cases too complicated to be uploaded on a self-service basis. For such situations, Flatfile offers a tool called Workspaces. The tool enables a software company’s engineers to guide customers through the process of uploading complex datasets and also provides technical information about the datasets, such as if they contain errors. 

Flatfile says its software relies on artificial intelligence to perform some of the tasks involved in fixing incorrectly formatted files uploaded by an application’s users. Moreover, its software consults more than 100 million data points collected from past file operations when making decisions.

“Modern data exchange is a mission critical challenge,” said Tiger Global partner John Curtius. “Flatfile enables businesses to exchange customer data simply, securely and efficiently with AI-assisted import flows, enabling all parties to accelerate return on investment.”

The conpany says its products are used by more than 500 companies, including Block Inc., Spotify Technology SA and other major tech firms. Flatfile plans to use the funding round to expand adoption of its products among large enterprises. Additionally, it will increase investments in product development initiatives.

“Flatfile is only just at the beginning of its journey to modernize how data is exchanged,” said Chief Executive Officer David Boskovic. “This funding will enable us to continue to grow our engineering team and deliver ready-to-use data across Saas and beyond.”

Image: Flatfile