New API Creates Efficient Way for Customers, Developers and BPOs to Integrate with LiveWork Smartsheet and CrowdFlower First to Integrate with LiveWork Service

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (September 16, 2009) –

LiveWork, a cloudsourcing service from LiveOps, today announced the availability of LiveWork API at developer.livework.com. The LiveWork API enables companies to easily integrate their existing business workflow applications with LiveWork’s virtual workforce platform.

Launched in 2009, LiveWork is a new on-demand service that brings the benefits of next-generation crowdsourcing and cloud computing to the world of business process outsourcing (BPO). The platform enables companies to outsource high-volume, repetitive tasks such as customer care, outbound phone calls or content moderation to virtual teams of freelancers. By enabling companies to create and manage on-demand, a virtual workforce, LiveWork brings the benefits of cloud computing – on-demand use, scalable, pay-as-you go and location-independence to outsourcing, called “cloudsourcing.”

LiveWork provides open access to LiveOps proven, mission-critical virtual workforce platform. Until the introduction of LiveWork, only direct customers of LiveOps On-Demand Contact Center platform or Contact Center services have been able to realize the efficiencies, cost savings and productivity gains of utilizing LiveOps’ on-demand work platform and/or workforce. Through the LiveWork service, LiveOps now makes its highly scalable, secure and on-demand work platform available beyond contact center type work. It provides an open platform where companies can easily and cost-effectively outsource repetitive tasks to freelancers or virtual outsourcers who are offering their services on the LiveWork platform. Availability of the API further reduces cost and creates efficiencies with integrating customers’ workflow applications with the LiveWork platform.

“Part of building a successful solution for on-demand workforces is providing the rich APIs, tools and support that enable developers and customers to easily integrate their custom data and applications with the LiveWork platform,” said Eckart Walther, LiveOps SVP and GM of LiveWork. “Now, with LiveWork and the LiveWork API, a much broader group of companies and BPOs can leverage our scalable and on-demand platform to ‘cloudsource’ work to communities of freelancers.”
Smartsheet and CrowdFlower to Integrate With LiveWork

Smartsheet, a SaaS based work management platform, is one of the first to integrate with LiveWork. To date, companies have crowdsourced over 100,000 tasks, from information work such as content review and content creation to phone-based work, such as lead generation, in conjunction with the Smartsheet and LiveWork integration.

According to Brent Frei, founder and chairman of Smartsheet, “Our customers have had a lot of success crowdsourcing thousands of work projects. Enough so, that we actively began pursuing additional suppliers of crowdsourcing services to plug into our general work management product. LiveWork is one of only two platforms with an API to access workers. Our initial integration work with LiveWork has proven their freelance workforce to be very high functioning. Providing quality teams of workers that can scale ‘on-demand’ as businesses require, as well as the ability for our customers to interact with the workforce in real-time, helps ensure the best results.”

“The LiveWork API will benefit both Smartsheet and LiveWork customers: enabling Smartsheet customers to tap into LiveWork’s virtual workforce and LiveWork customers to leverage Smartsheet’s work management tool,” added Frei.

CrowdFlower is also announcing plans to integrate with LiveWork API. The company provides Labor as a Service (LaaS) by letting customers access an always-on, scalable workforce. Today, CrowdFlower uses LiveWork to access a high-quality distributed workforce comprising tens of thousands of workers, and also uses LiveWork’s virtual workforce management platform to recruit, screen, schedule, train, manage and pay an on-demand workforce. With LiveWork’s open API, CrowdFlower can now seamlessly integrate its applications to automate the workflow of ongoing tasks from workforce recruitment to compensation and reporting.

“CrowdFlower and LiveWork share a common vision – to usher in the future of business so enterprise-class work can reliably be done in the cloud,” said Lukas Biewald, CEO of CrowdFlower. “By working together, we can combine a virtual workforce management platform with integrated workflow applications and CrowdFlower’s statistical quality control technology to make it easy for companies to tap thousands of workers for business tasks at equal or better quality than a full-time workforce.”

More information about LiveWork, LiveWork API and partners can be found at www.livework.com.
About LiveOps, Inc.

LiveOps is a rapidly growing technology company offering two innovative solutions for enterprises: Contact Center in the Cloud, a SaaS technology platform for managing contact centers, and Workforce in the Cloud, an on-demand workforce for outsourcing call center calls. LiveOps On-Demand Contact Center Platform brings the value of cloud computing to the contact center by enabling enterprises to rapidly deploy an always-on and instantly scalable contact center infrastructure in a pay-per-use model that enables customers to achieve greater operational and cost efficiencies. LiveOps uses this same technology platform everyday to successfully run the largest virtual call center with over 20,000 independent agents. LiveOps provides enterprises with the on-demand call center platform and community of on-demand independent agents to quickly achieve better business results. In 2009, LiveOps introduced LiveWork; an on-demand work platform where companies can instantly outsource tasks using teams of experts on LiveWork, their own community of freelancers or business process outsourcers (BPOs). The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

LiveOps is a registered trademark and LiveWork is a trademark of LiveOps, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Source: LiveOps