Battery Ventures backs workforce management software company Quinyx in new $12M round

Quinyx, a Stockholm-headquartered company that offers cloud-based software to help businesses manage things like employee scheduling, communication, task-management and payroll integration, has raised a further $12 million in funding. Backing the round is VC firm Battery Ventures, which sees Boston-based Battery General Partner Michael Brown join the Quinyx board.

Founded in 2005 by Erik Fjellborg, Quinyx’s CEO, after he spent the summer working at McDonald’s, the company’s workforce management software targets employers of shift-based or ‘flexible’ workers, such as those operating in the fast-food industry.

It enables them to replace more arcane organisational methods, including Excel spreadsheets or even pen and paper, and legacy ‘on-premise’ software. The Quinyx feature-set includes scheduling, shift planning and swapping, timesheet functionality via workers checking in using Quinyx’s mobile apps, and budget forecasting.

Interestingly, McDonald’s since became Quinyx’s first customer, and the company now claims over 275,000 users (i.e. workers) of its software across 20 countries. Customers include major brands such as Papa John’s, Rituals Cosmetics, London City Airport, DHL, Humana, and Debenhams.

“My restaurant manager spent hours every day managing quick schedule changes, absences and communication. My idea was to build a cloud-based solution so that the employees themselves could interact with the schedule and the workplace,” Fjellborg tells me.

“I believe the experience working at McDonald’s has helped me build software that is well suited for this type of business. In retail and hospitality people don’t have time to sit at the computer. They need software that is quick and mobile so that they be focus on serving their customers.”

On competitors, Fjellborg argues that Quinyx’s main competitor remains “excel spreadsheets that are widely used to create schedules in many businesses”. However, other startups that broadly operate in a similar space include the likes of Planday, Humanity, and 7shifts.

Meanwhile, Battery General Partner Michael Brown says the Quinyx investment ties into a trend that is seeing the rise of mobile and less-expensive, more-flexible cloud software change how companies manage workers who aren’t at a desk all day. “The market for this technology is enormous, and we think Erik and his team are true pioneers in this area,” he says. “Quinyx has just scratched the surface in terms of where it can take its business”.