Aviso wants to make revenue forecasts as easy as checking the weather

K.V. Rao thinks it’s crazy Fortune 500 companies still use spreadsheets to predict their quarterly earnings.

The former Zuora executive set out to improve that process by founding Aviso, which officially launched today with $8 million in new financing. The company’s thesis: You don’t need to be a data scientist to properly weigh and benefit from your company’s financial data.

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Aviso makes a cloud-based forecasting tool intended to help customers predict (and improve) their revenues. It grabs data from all sorts of enterprise systems — spreadsheets, sales apps, databases, and so on — then automatically cleans it up, making it understandable to financial executives and analysts. Aviso calls the system “Total Revenue Intelligence.”

Rao cofounded the venture alongside Andrew Abrahams, a former risk management executive at JPMorgan Chase. Together, they pioneered the software, which uses machine learning techniques and open APIs to project corporate revenue and learn as it takes in more data. The product has been in development for two years. Early adopters include RingCentral, Saba Software, FireEye, Damballa, Replicon, and Zuora.

Aviso’s $8 million funding round comes from a swath of institutional and individual investors. On the institutional side, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, Cowboy Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta participated in the round. On the individual side, there’s Subrah Iyar, founder and CEO of WebEx; Roger Sippl, founder and CEO of Informix and Vantive; Dave Hersh, founding CEO of Jive Software; and Ron Gill, CFO of NetSuite.

Aviso “will solve one of the most important problems facing both private and public companies today — making reliable predictions across all revenue streams,” said Jason Pressman, managing director at Shasta Ventures, in a statement. “Aviso has a unique opportunity to transform decision making in the boardroom and across all of a company’s operations.”