Crowdcast has raised $6 million from Menlo Ventures in a deal that bodes well for a new generation of companies with crowdsourcing and business intelligence offerings.
Crowdcast is also receiving a follow on investment form Alsop-Louie Partners. The funding will support expanded sales and marketing efforts. It will also serve to expand Crowdsource integrations with third parties.
Crowdcast applies risk management principles and crowdsourcing techniques to gain insights from employees. Questions are posed to employs who provide answers along with bets about what they feel is the probable outcome. The betting is intended to force respondents to look at an issue, apply logic to the issue, judge the different factors and make a decision.
Executives can immediately look at the results to make decisions.
Crowdcast is currently partners with SAP BusinessObjects and other companies with risk management solutions.
Crowdcast is in a competitive space. Social business intelligence has crossover with other categories such as predictive analytics. Competitors include companies like IBM, SAS and Tibco.These companies use more traditional methods for aggregating and analyzing data to help managers make business decisions. It’s plausible, though, that Crowdcast could be a viable offering in conjunction with these types of services.
