Smartsheet Acquires Converse.AI for Conversational Workflow Automation

Cloud software provider Smartsheet has acquired Converse.AI, adding natural-language chatbots to Smartsheet's toolbox for automating business processes.

Smartsheet is designed to automate time-consuming business processes that span multiple systems, such as onboarding new customers, cross-departmental reporting, qualifying sales leads, and reporting safety violations.

"It's about helping teams and organizations actually get work done -- planning, capturing data, tracking, automating actions and then reporting on work," Gene Farrell, Smartsheet's senior vice president of product, tells Enterprise Cloud News.

The Converse.AI acquisition will bolster Smartsheet's natural-language user experience and provide links to messaging platforms such as Slack, Workplace by Facebook, Salesforce and Google, Smartsheet says.

The companies aren't disclosing financial details of the deal. The Converse.AI team will stay intact as a wholly owned subsidiary under Smartsheet, including Converse.AI founders Tony Lucas and Gihan Munasinghe. Smartsheet also acquires Converse.AI's patent portfolio.

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Smartsheet has more than 760 employees in offices in Bellevue and Boston. It raised $52.1 million in series F Funding in May, at a valuation of $852 million. Its service is used by half of the Fortune 500, with customers including Cisco, Netflix, Colliers International and Hilton, and partnerships with Microsoft and Google.

Converse.AI operates out of Edinburgh, Scotland, and was founded in 2015. Converse.AI Chatflow, launched in 2016, allows any business user to easily build and manage bots via a drag-and-drop interface, without writing code.

Smartsheet says the Converse.AI acquisition will help Smartsheet's customers on three fronts: It will accelerate Smartsheet's ability to build natural language user experiences and conversational workflows. Also, ChatFlow will eventually enable Smartsheet users to build and manage more sophisticated workflow automations within Smartsheet, without writing code. And Smartsheet partners and customers will be able to build their own integrations and capabilities on Smartsheet.

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— Mitch Wagner Editor, Enterprise Cloud News