Last week, LiveOps announced the availability of LiveWork API, which enables companies to integrate existing business workflow applications with LiveWork's virtual workforce platform. Launched in 2009, LiveOps' defines LiveWork is an on-demand service that brings the benefits of crowdsourcing and cloud computing to the world of business process outsourcing.It's likely helpful to back up one step here. Crowdsourcing is a three-year old term for taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people. Journalist Jeff Howe first used the term in a 2006 article in Wired magazine, and has since written a book, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. Howe attempts to make the case that the right community with the right incentives can often complete certain tasks more effectively and less expensively than a traditional enterprise.
An oft-cited proof point for crowdsourcing is in the market for stock photography. iStockphoto turned margins in that business upside down by opening the market to amateur photographers charging $1 to $5 per image versus the hundreds of dollars commanded by professionals. What iStockphoto did was create a marketplace that turned the economics of the buying and selling of stock images on its ear.
LiveOps' CEO Maynard Webb, as a former president of eBay, is no stranger to helping to create new business models. Liveops has built an on-demand platform that allows companies to venture into crowdsourcing without building their own infrastructure. With LiveWork service, LiveOps is making its on-demand platform, initially designed to handle contact center interactions, available for additional types of work. The platform enables companies to outsource high-volume, repetitive tasks to virtual teams of freelancers.
The traditional interaction between a company and an outsourcer has been largely manual, through spreadsheets, email or custom workflow applications built for each outsourcing engagement. The LiveWork APIs are a step towards standardizing this process, reducing the cost of integrating the customers' internal workflow applications with the LiveWork platform. And that will help aid adoption in this burgeoning area.
CrowdFlower is a company that provides Labor as a Service (LaaS) by letting customers access an always-on, scalable workforce. CrowdFlower uses LiveWork's virtual workforce management platform to recruit, screen, schedule, train, manage and pay its own on-demand workforce as well as to gain access to the LIveWork workforce. With the API, CrowdFlower can integrate its workflow applications more tightly with the administrative side of managing a far-flung workforce implemented on LiveWork.
I think the announcement shows that early adopters, like CrowdFlower, quickly realized that easy integration of the processes among participants in the market could facilitate trial and adoption of the services LiveOps and CrowdFlower are trying to promote.
With the software infrastructure in place, it remains to be seen what kinds of tasks will lend themselves best to crowdsourcing. LiveOps has already proved-in contact center interactions. What's next?
