DURHAM – UNC-Chapel Hill grads Adam Smith and Adam Long know first-hand the challenges of scaling a company and managing workflows.
Together, they spent nearly a decade building up another Durham startup, Automated Insights. Smith, 43, as chief operating officer, and Long, 31, as chief product officer, helped grow it from a small team to a company of 80-plus employees, with multiple layers of management. (It was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2015).
But as Smith recalls, gaps in communication emerged. They tried to solve the problem in a myriad of ways, but nothing seemed to work.
“We always thought there had to be a better way. So we built it.”
Adam Smith
Adam Long
Enter Wrangle, the duo’s newly launched startup that is automating workflows to track processes like onboarding new customers or approving a new sales quote.
This month, the startup wrapped up its beta testing and launched integrations with messaging platforms like Slack and Napier.
“We want to help cut out the endless postmortem meetings, the process update emails, and the hounding of peers and managers for updates,” Smith says.
“If you can whiteboard it, you can Wrangle it.”
Automating workflows
How it works: Using Wrangle’s “drag-and-drop” workflow designer, companies collaborate and map out their processes. Then Wrangle notifies the right person in Slack or email at the right time with exactly what needs to be done. They can do their tasks and approvals inside Slack or email with one-click buttons.
“Follow up at each step is automated, progress is transparent for all, and managers get insights on what is working and where the bottlenecks are,” Smith says.
Wrangle is also connected to over 2,000 apps and can be kicked off in platforms like Salesforce, Zendesk, Hubspot, Quickbooks, Docusign, GSuite, and more.
“We are bringing the no-code movement that has revolutionized many industries to address workflow automation,” Smith says. “With Wrangle there is no large implementation investment, no need for specially trained employees, and no need to write code to build out your process. By leveraging the cloud and platforms like Zapier, we can scale within an enterprise in ways existing platforms cannot. Any team, department, or division can get started in minutes and be improving their operations.”
Right now, they’re bootstrapping the company and will continue to evolve the product. Specifically, Smith says they will be adding analytics to help teams quickly identify bottlenecks and predict ways they can improve.
He remains optimistic, even with the current economic downturn triggered by the pandemic. This new reality of remote working could even be a boon for the company, Smith says.
“It’s a great fit for what we are building. Our goal is to make sure everyone is on the same page and connected.”
