The App That's Like SnapChat For Business Goes After Bigger Companies

TigerText, the business messaging app that lets you delete messages after a set period of time, is rolling out a bunch of features to make it more popular in businesses.

On the front end, it's improved its interface to almost resemble consumer apps like WhatsApp or Facebook messenger. It also automatically recognizes which organization the user belongs to when signing up, and the user can quickly switch between organizations and contact lists within the app.

On the back end, it's added a new data analytics platform that shows companies a detailed picture of traffic flow in real time, like who's communicating with who, how often they message each other, and when messages are forwarded or recalled. With this metadata (TigerText doesn't keep track of the message's content), TigerText CEO Brad Brooks says it can provide more insight into how communication occurs within the enterprise. For example, it can compare data of similar companies and give advice on which communication areas need improvement for better productivity.

"It informs us and the customer, and it really serves as a powerful tool to look at real time communication in a way that you never had before," Brooks told Business Insider.

Brooks, who also cofounded the secret-sharing app Whisper, said today's move should better position his company to reach a broader enterprise audience.

So far, TigerText has mostly been used by healthcare professionals because it's compliant with HIPAA, the strict health care privacy law in the U.S. Its strong security measures and ability to delete messages automatically have made it popular among doctors who need to share sensitive patient data with other doctors quickly without violating any privacy regulations. Also, since you can delete messages after a set period of time, there's no risk of leaving sensitive data on the app.

It's hard to tell if these new features will make TigerText a more appealing product to big enterprise customers beyond the healthcare industry. After all, the enterprise communication app space has been one of the hottest areas lately, with Slack, Cotap, and even Cisco joining the competition.

But TigerText, founded in 2010, is more experienced than others and is laser-focused on mobile. Also, its security compliance and ability to delete messages could make it a more appealing choice for those in heavily regulated industries like healthcare, government, and finance.

TigerText has been downloaded over 4 million times and is currently used by roughly 5,000 organizations. It raised $21 million this past January, after its sales growth quadrupled in 2013.