Employee Cycle, the leading HR analytics dashboard for small and medium-sized businesses, has closed a $2.5 million seed round of financing, led by Impellent Ventures. The round included participation from Collab Capital, Converge VC, as well as other angel investors and contributors.

The use of proceeds will support the development and launch of the first Employee Data Platform (EDP), an enhanced product for automating HR reporting and data quality auditing. Employee Cycle plans to scale and hire in the sales, marketing, and engineering departments.

“We always hear that employees are a company’s greatest asset, but with most organizations having employee data spread across multiple HR systems, they end up knowing very little about the people who work for them. To solve this problem, we’re empowering companies to transform their disconnected employee data into centralized workforce insights, to make smarter and more data-driven workforce decisions,” said Employee Cycle Chief Executive Officer Bruce Marable. “The support from customers, integration partners, and a diverse coalition of investors and industry leaders is validation of our model, and an opportunity to help organizations better anticipate the needs of employees.”

The company’s dashboard integrates with almost three dozen commonly-used HR software systems, primarily in ‘HR tech’ categories including HRIS, payroll, recruiting, and performance management systems. This allows HR leaders to unify and analyze their data across workforce areas such as headcount, recruiting, turnover, retention, DEI, compensation, performance management and others. All of these integrations are intuitive and automatically update data in order to provide the most real-time information.

“Human resource leaders manage a deluge of data in unconnected ways, and it’s not sustainable,” said Impellent Ventures Managing Partner David Brown. “Employee Cycle is providing more than operational efficiency; it’s a cost-saving business intelligence tool that drives real insight into company operations and culture, which is more important than ever before.”

Among the champions behind Employee Cycle and its mission is Impellent Venture’s General Partner, Tarik Trotter (known by his stage name as Black Thought). His commitment stems from a belief in supporting founders of underrepresented communities who are redefining the status quo and creating opportunities for others. This year, just 1.2% of all venture capital dollars have funded Black-founded startups.

“To me, employers can do so much more to recruit, hire, and support diverse candidates during the on-boarding process,” said Trotter. “Bruce and his team are proof that talent and great ideas are going to flourish, regardless of the statistics. It’s my goal to ensure he and other Black and Brown founders are given the financial opportunities to create lasting businesses.”

About Employee Cycle

Employee Cycle is an Employee Data Platform (EDP) changing the way HR leaders use data, beginning with transforming disconnected employee data into a user-friendly, centralized, and real-time HR analytics dashboard. By leveraging APIs from a wide variety of best-in-breed HR systems, we provide a single data-driven view of the entire workforce. This allows HR leaders to better identify, communicate, and solve workforce problems (ex: turnover costs, lack of diversity, gender pay inequality, poor employer brand, etc.), avoid risks, and save costs. Employee Cycle is a graduate of Comcast NBCUniversal’s Lift Lab Accelerator Powered by Techstars.