Zurich/Copenhagen/Berlin/Oakland – March 23, 2021 – Beekeeper, the leading mobile workforce productivity and collaboration platform designed specifically for frontline workers, today announced the acquisition of Lua. The acquisition of this prime operational workflow platform underlines Beekeeper’s commitment to providing a full-stack mobile platform to enable frontline teams to operate more efficiently and effectively. Lua, with a presence in Denmark and the U.S., digitizes how work is coordinated and orchestrated across frontline teams. Beekeeper and Lua will use their combined expertise to digitize manual, paper-based processes to enable companies globally several trillion dollars in productivity gains.
With two billion frontline workers worldwide working in essential industries like healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and hospitality, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of the tools they have been given to do their jobs. In the past, frontline workers have been overlooked in terms of technology investments. Frontline technologies receive only 1% of all venture capital each year, despite frontliners accounting for 80% of the global workforce.
The predominant way their work is orchestrated today is manual on paper or with antiquated software that is only available to supervisors. The lack of automation of recurring frontline processes is highly inefficient and is costing companies almost three hours per frontline worker per week. These are the savings that Beekeeper and Lua aim to achieve for their customers.
“Lua is a godsend to the frontline world,” said Anja Luthje, CEO of Unique Hospitality Solutions and former executive at Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. “What is special about Lua is that workflows can be digitized in an interactive and personalized manner. It’s a great technology that you can start using in less than 24 hours. The fact that it’s very user friendly and allows employees to communicate in their preferred language leads to fast team adoption. It boosts team productivity right away and supports efficiency in a lean departmental structure that so many organizations are working with currently.”
Leading global brands currently rely on Lua to power their standard operating procedures to save time and increase quality. Their workflow engine supports the process every step along the chain, for example from a housekeeper cleaning a room to a supervisor inspecting it.
By adding Lua’s unique technology and talent in building and connecting frontline workflows, Beekeeper will further strengthen its operational capabilities to tackle the massive productivity gain opportunity that exists in the market. Frontline teams will benefit from having access to a full-stack mobile collaboration platform that will allow them to orchestrate their work in a truly agile and dynamic way.
“Joining Beekeeper is an incredible moment for our team. We have spent the last three years building the best frontline workflow platform in the market that is at the very core of the work these teams do. Today, customers in five continents around the world rely on our system to run their teams and to run their companies, enabling them to become more efficient and effective,” said Hugh O’Flanagan, CEO and Co-Founder of Lua. “We will continue to work, now as one team, to turn businesses from manual to magical and we cannot wait for what we will achieve together.”
“Frontline workers are often the most public-facing employees, and even those who aren’t, they still guide the customer journey. They are the forefront of our businesses, as well as the backbone of the economy, and deserve to be given the right tools to succeed,” said Cristian Grossmann, CEO and Co-Founder of Beekeeper. “With the acquisition of Lua, Beekeeper continues to accelerate its position as the leading mobile workforce productivity and collaboration platform for frontline workers. We will continue to put their needs first and are excited to spearhead the digitalization of this trillion-dollar market.”
