{"id":27824,"date":"2023-03-29T22:18:27","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T22:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2023\/03\/29\/leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance\/"},"modified":"2023-03-29T22:18:29","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T22:18:29","slug":"leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2023\/03\/29\/leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance\/","title":{"rendered":"LeapXpert raises $22M to monitor employee chats for compliance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/29\/leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance\/<\/a><\/br>
\nLeapXpert raises $22M to monitor employee chats for compliance<\/br>
\n2023-03-29 22:18:27<\/br><\/p>\n

\n

The pandemic brought with it a spike in work-from-home and hybrid work, which increased peoples\u2019 dependence on personal devices \u2014 driving businesses to try and rein in their use. It\u2019s been a particular challenge for the financial services industry, which has comparatively strict governance and compliance requirements. In September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined<\/a> Wall Street banks, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, $1.8 billion over failures in monitoring how staff used their personal phones to talk about work.<\/p>\n

On the hunt for a solution to the chat compliance problem, three entrepreneurs \u2014 Dima Gutzeit, Avi Pardo and Rina Charles \u2014 decided to create their own, LeapXpert<\/a>. LeapXpert allows employees to message customers or colleagues through popular apps, including WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage, Telegram and Signal, while monitoring and archiving their business-related chats.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy co-founders and I were concerned that if businesses didn\u2019t evolve fast enough to adopt modern messaging apps and transform this growing shadow communication into approved and reliable business communication mediums, there would be major negative implications,\u201d Gutzeit told TechCrunch in an email interview. \u201cAnd so, LeapXpert was founded with a mission to help companies seize the opportunity to transform business communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staffers might find the idea of an app that records their conversations disconcerting \u2014 and rightly so. When asked about privacy, Gutzeit was open about the fact that LeapXpert can maintain \u201ca complete record\u201d of all conversations between a company\u2019s employees and third parties \u2014 but added that LeapXpert itself doesn\u2019t have access to the data.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like in cases of regulatory audits, when regulators turn directly to the financial institute, law enforcement agencies may request data directly from our customers,\u201d Gutzeit clarified. \u201cIt\u2019s then up to our customers to decide if and how much data to pull from their archiving system and hand over to the authorities. We aren\u2019t a party to any such transaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a trend, to be fair. Even before the pandemic, conversation monitoring in the workplace was becoming more common than it used to be. According to a 2019 survey<\/a> by GetApp, only 10% of managers considered recording worker chats to be an invasion of privacy, while 47% admitted to monitoring conversations on a daily or weekly basis.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, workers aren\u2019t too happy about this. In a 2022 study<\/a>, Harvard Business Review found that monitoring staffers actually makes them more<\/em> likely to break rules. And anecdotally, monitoring tends to lead to mission creep. Goldman Sachs once used<\/a> a monitoring system to automatically flag 180 different phrases in employee communications for scrutiny by its compliance officers, including seemingly innocuous exchanges like \u201canswer your phone,\u201d \u201cdon\u2019t worry I\u2019ll take care of it\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

But given the high stakes in the financial industry, with the SEC making it abundantly clear that it sees personal, unmonitored texts from bank employees as an impediment to investigations, employers are less likely to be dissuaded. See Deutsche Bank, which last June forced<\/a> bankers to install an app called Movius that tracks communications on their phones.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor technical decision makers, maintaining control over messaging channels used for business communication is crucial,\u201d Gutzeit said. \u201cTo date, our unique value has been in building the pipes for better communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

While that\u2019s up for debate, LeapXpert touts its worker-monitoring, \u201cmobile-first\u201d dashboard through which employees can sign in to and access chat channels such as SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Signal, Line and certain VoIP apps. On the employer side, companies can set rules and requirements for the types and level of materials that can be sent internally or externally, including specific keywords and phrases, and see the real-time status of all messages sent.<\/span><\/p>\n

LeapXpert promises to avoid capturing private and personal messages by siloing communications, enabling employees to have an independent messaging profile for personal use. TechCrunch wasn\u2019t able to test this, though, so we can\u2019t say how well it works in practice. We also can\u2019t say whether it\u2019s possible for an employer to circumvent this silo \u2014 a valid fear for surveillance-wary employees.<\/p>\n

\"LeapXpert\"<\/p>\n

LeapXpert\u2019s platform acts as a gateway to popular chat channels such as WhatsApp, SMS and iMessage, running monitoring and archiving tools on top of chat sessions. Image Credits:<\/strong> LeapXpert<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Purely from a competitive standpoint, LeapXpert faces an uphill battle. Other platforms like it exist, including Symphony, TeleMessage and VoxSmart. But Gutzeit argues that, rightly or wrongly, LeapXpert is more holistic in its data capture than most.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have added dozens of integrations with other tech solution providers. It has made the platform more compressive and enabled new use cases for new markets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In any case, LeapXpert hasn\u2019t had trouble attracting customers \u2014 or investors, for that matter. Gutzeit says that the company counts \u201cdozens\u201d of financial institutions among its client base as well as \u201cdozens\u201d of enterprises in other vertical markets that collectively have tens of thousands of users on the platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cCustomers tell us that our product is a \u2018must have\u2019 not \u2018nice to have,’\u201d Gutzeit said. \u201cThe slowdown in the economy and in tech has not affected our business.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, LeapXpert this week closed a $22 million Series A funding round led by Rockefeller Asset Management with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures, the Partnership Fund for New York City and other undisclosed existing investors. It brings the company\u2019s total raised to $22 million, which Gutzeit says is being put toward growing LeapXpert\u2019s 150-person workforce, expanding into new markets and investing in product development.<\/p>\n

With the cash infusion, LeapXpert also plans to launch a software-as-a-service version of its platform aimed at small- and medium-sized business customers. Currently, LeapXpert comes in only on-premises and self-managed cloud flavors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe latest round provides us an additional layer of stability and comfort during these times and enables us to maintain and even accelerate our growth trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/br><\/br><\/br><\/p>\n

Science, Tech, Technology<\/br>
\n<\/br>
\nSource:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/29\/leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance\/<\/a><\/br><\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/29\/leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance\/ LeapXpert raises $22M to monitor employee chats for compliance 2023-03-29 22:18:27 The pandemic brought with it a spike in work-from-home and hybrid work, which increased peoples\u2019 dependence on personal devices \u2014 driving businesses to try and rein in their use. It\u2019s been a particular challenge for the financial services industry, which has comparatively strict […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-tech","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nLeapXpert raises $22M to monitor employee chats for compliance - Science and Nerds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2023\/03\/29\/leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LeapXpert raises $22M to monitor employee chats for compliance - Science and Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/29\/leapxpert-raises-22m-to-monitor-employee-chats-for-compliance\/ LeapXpert raises $22M to monitor employee chats for compliance 2023-03-29 22:18:27 The pandemic brought with it a spike in work-from-home and hybrid work, which increased peoples\u2019 dependence on personal devices \u2014 driving businesses to try and rein in their use. 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