Tactile Raises $11M To Help Workers Sync Their Personal And Professional Data

JPEG_-_DropboxTactile, a new enterprise company that wants to help workers bring together all their customer information into one app, has raised $11.2 million in Series A funding from Accel Partners and Redpoint Ventures.

Founder Chuck Ganapathi developed the idea while an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Accel. He was formerly the creator of Salesforce’s “Facebook for the Enterprise” Chatter, so he was looking to develop a new social app for the enterprise. He landed on the idea of putting the needs of the individual worker first and bridging information silos, from Salesforce to LinkedIn to email.

The company’s overall goal is to mirror how people really work on mobile. In Tactile’s first app, Tact (which you can download here), the startup is focusing on salespeople and syncs data from a variety of sources to build stronger customer relationships. Tact syncs a sales professional’s business data from email, calendars, tasks, contacts, LinkedIn, and Salesforce. With all this data linked and available in one place, salespeople can better prepare for, capture and follow-up on their daily conversations.

For example, with a specific contact you can see your emails from them, their LinkedIn information, Salesforce tasks and data associated with the client, notes and more, You can also sync any follow-up tasks and notes with Salesforce and log this data into the app.

“We’re not trying to replace the CRM. We think we are complementary as the personal cloud for a sales individual,” Ganapathi tells TechCrunch. He adds that at the moment, Tactile is appealing to the user, vs. the companies for adoption. The startup sees Tact as an app that workers can use from job to job, keeping personal notes and some client information.

“From the start, we’ve been aligned with Chuck’s vision to invert the top-down enterprise software industry model,” said Kevin Efrusy, who led Accel’s investment in Tactile. “With its people-first approach and groundbreaking technology, Tactile is taking a fresh look at an important market, and we are excited to join forces with Redpoint in helping Chuck and his team define a new category.”

Of course, it’s important to point out that with the BYOD trend, many companies are more attentive to how workers are accessing and using their data. But Ganapathi says that if a professional is accessing their Salesforce account and data, that data will not travel with the app if that worker leaves the company.