OnForce founder creates new “labor resource platform” called Work Market, enabling not just IT pros to manage the entire labor supply chain.
By Colleen Frye
With Work Market, the latest venture of CEO Jeffrey Leventhal, previous founder of the on-site services marketplace OnForce.com that was acquired in 2007, businesses will be able to manage labor in a “variable fashion,” Leventhal says. Claiming to carve out a new category—labor resource platform, or LRP—Leventhal says Work Market is a system for managing the entire labor supply chain, from employees to contractors to third parties.
A cloud-based platform built in Java and hosted on Amazon EC2, Work Market is designed to manage an on-demand, scalable work force. Launching in May of this year, Work Market has received $6 million in venture capital and currently has 63 clients signed up for its beta, Leventhal says, which is ongoing now.
Three features differentiate Work Market from competitive offerings, according to Leventhal. First, it is labor-agnostic. While Leventhanl’s roots are in IT services, he says beta clients also include a yoga school, a legal staffing firm, and a customer that manages freelance bloggers.
Second, Leventhal says Work Market includes tools for human resources, CRM, and professional services automation, so an entire business can be managed via one system. And third, Work Market is modular so clients can use just the features they need without having to sign up for the entire platform. The platform includes business functions such as background screening, competency validation, payment schedules, tax compliance and filing, customized invoices and reporting, and management of proprietary documents.
Work Market is free for businesses managing employees. A business invites subcontractors to register on Work Market. For managing those subcontractors, Work Market charges $4 to create and post an assignment, and 4 percent of the transaction value (the agreed upon fee for service) to the subcontractor. Leventhal says Work Market is the “employer of record. The VAR has this as an off-payroll resource.”
When a client sends an assignment to a third party (a contractor with whom the client does not have an existing relationship) found via Work Market, Work Market charges $8 to the client and 8 percent of the transaction value to the third party, according to the Work Market Web site.
Leventhal says the primary targets for Work Market are integration companies, project management firms, VARs, ISVs, and OEMs—both for finding work and running their own businesses. “We’re servicing someone who’s servicing an end user. We support the channel. A VAR will use our system to get business for its staff and to cover their own white spaces when they need to.”
Leventhal says he expects the platform to be stable, and thus far it has been tested on Internet Explorer, Chrome, Mozilla, and Safari browsers, and is optimized for smartphones. Mobile apps will be available soon, he says, and expects the beta to be completed by the spring.
