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Venture Capital News: WorkFusion Secures $15M Series B Funding

2014-04-29
NEW YORK, NY, Leading enterprise crowd computing platform, today announced a $15M series B funding led by Mohr Davidow Ventures.
WorkFusion (formerly CrowdComputing Systems), the leading enterprise crowd computing platform, today announced a $15M series B funding led by Mohr Davidow Ventures, with participation from existing investors, Greycroft Partners, iNovia Capital, and RTP Ventures. The new funding will be used to deepen WorkFusion's vertical market solutions and expand the company's engineering, marketing, and sales operations to meet accelerating customer demand. Mohr Davidow Ventures General Partner Katherine Barr will join WorkFusion's board of directors.

'By efficiently blending human and machine tasks, WorkFusion is a massively disruptive technology platform in the $300B business process outsourcing industry', said Barr. 'The ability of the platform to monitor and learn from routine human tasks and increasingly route relevant tasks to machines results in substantial cost savings, quicker turnarounds, and quality improvements associated with enterprise automation.'

'Businesses are struggling to adapt to a rapid shift from the traditional FTE model to a hybrid model of machines, fractional online workers, and employees,' said Geoffrey Moore, MDV Venture Partner and author of Crossing the Chasm. 'WorkFusion makes this shift seamless with their SaaS product, which we believe will become the standard platform for performing enterprise knowledge work.'

Transforming knowledge work

WorkFusion transforms enterprise knowledge work by using machine learning to combine, manage, and quality-control automation, crowdsourced workers, and employees on web-based workflows. The company recently rebranded from CrowdComputing Systems to WorkFusion - the name of its platform product - to underscore its focus on the hybrid man-machine workforce. In this hybrid model, WorkFusion atomizes complex enterprise knowledge processes - such as data search and entry, process optimization, product comparison and categorization - into microtasks and automates repetitive tasks, recruits and trains crowdsourced workers to perform judgment work, and distributes high-value work to employees with subject matter expertise. The platform uses advanced algorithms to monitor and optimize worker performance, provide real-time workforce analytics, and incrementally automate more tasks by identifying patterns in human work.

Any enterprise knowledge process that requires a large number of digital workers is prime for WorkFusion, and the platform is considered an alternative or addition to traditional business process outsourcing (BPO). WorkFusion has focused its efforts to date on the financial services and eCommerce markets through industry-specific solutions, attracting such customers as IDC, Thomson Reuters, and Walmart.

'The information industry has struggled for years how to combine labor and technology to deliver cost-effective, high quality solutions to clients' said Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters. 'WorkFusion significantly increases the speed and efficiency of data and content operations by optimizing the mix of resources through learning algorithms and providing a better platform for new product innovation.'

'We began with the mission to relieve the burden of monotonous, time-consuming work from human workers through artificial intelligence in order to unleash their capacity for creativity and innovation,' said Max Yankelevich, co-founder, chief architect and CEO of WorkFusion. 'As we scaled the platform with customers, we realized how badly broken the enterprise knowledge work model was. Manufacturing was broken until Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. We're doing the same thing for knowledge work, and we'll do it better and faster with Katherine on our board and with Mohr Davidow as our partner.'

About WorkFusion

WorkFusion is the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) crowd computing platform. WorkFusion transforms knowledge work by using machine learning to integrate and manage automation tools, crowdsourced workers, and employees (ACE) on web-based workflows. Over time, WorkFusion's machine learning automates more repetitive tasks, freeing human workers to focus on higher value work. WorkFusion helps enterprise customers increase workforce scale, elasticity, productivity and efficiency and lowers the barriers to innovation. Born out of MIT research in 2010, WorkFusion is a privately held company headquartered in New York City. For more information, visit www.workfusion.com.

About Mohr Davidow Ventures

For 30 years the Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) team has invested in early stage technology-based startups that redefine or create large new markets. The firm partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build companies where big data, applied analytics, and the reach and power of the web/mobile cloud can be leveraged to drive emerging opportunities in verticals ranging from social commerce to finance to online marketing and consumer-driven healthcare. Leading companies funded by MDV include: Agile; BandPage; Brocade; BuildDirect; Coupa; HealthTap; Hotchalk; Infusionsoft; Kabbage; Proofpoint; Rally Software; Rambus; Retention Science; Rocket Fuel; Ruby Ribbon; Shutterfly; Storefront; Ticketfly; and Visible Measures. For more information, visit www.mdv.com.
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