Beekeeper Acquires Lua to Tackle Trillion-Dollar Opportunity in the Frontline Workforce Productivity and Collaboration Space

I’m thrilled to announce one of the most exciting developments in Beekeeper history. This new venture will cement our platform as the leading mobile workforce productivity and collaboration platform for frontline workers, and further our mission of helping companies around the world achieve operational excellence. 

Beekeeper has officially acquired Lua! The acquisition of this prime operational workflow platform reinforces our commitment to providing a full-stack mobile platform that enables frontline teams to operate more efficiently, effectively and safely. 

What is the Lua platform exactly? I’m so glad you asked. Lua digitizes how work is coordinated and orchestrated across frontline teams. Beekeeper and Lua will use our combined expertise to digitize manual, paper-based processes to help global companies achieve several trillion dollars in productivity gains.

Needless to say, we’re very excited to tackle this massive opportunity!

Why Lua? The Story of How a Perfect Operational Partnership Led to an Exciting Acquisition

We began our relationship with the Lua (originally named Whispr) team by adding them as a Marketplace partner in March 2020. At that time, the platform was primarily used in hospitality, combining voice and on-screen technology so hotels could improve the workflow of their housekeeping departments with voice-guided checklists.

Once COVID began impacting how businesses operate, Lua responded by offering free checklists to help frontline workers sanitize their workspaces. 

With Lua’s sophisticated workflow technology and Beekeeper’s commitment to operational excellence, customers can now fully automate time-consuming tasks that would often take hours for frontline managers to coordinate. 

Beekeeper + Lua: What Happens Now?

Both the Beekeeper and Lua teams are very excited about joining forces.

Hugh O’Flanagan, CEO and Co-Founder of Lua, says, 

“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. 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. 

By adding Lua’s unique technology and talent in building and connecting operational workflows, 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. We will continue to put their needs first and are excited to spearhead this frontline digital transformation.

Frontline Digitalization Is the New Competitive Advantage

With over two billion frontline workers around the world working in essential industries like healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and hospitality, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a harsh truth about how underserved our frontline workforces are when it comes to adequate workplace technology. 

The truth is that many frontline workers still rely on manual, paper-based processes or cumbersome, antiquated software to do their jobs. 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.

Here’s what a former Lua customer has to say about the impact the technology has had on their team: 

“Lua is a godsend to the frontline world! 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 super 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!”
– Anja Luthje, CEO of Unique Hospitality Solutions and former executive at Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group 

We couldn’t be more excited about welcoming Lua’s technology and team into our Hive. Stay tuned for more updates on how this partnership will affect the frontline workforce productivity and collaboration platform you’ve come to know and love. 

This is only the beginning of creating a world-class, mobile collaboration platform for the massive growth opportunity of frontline productivity. We are excited to embark on this journey together and continue to bring in partners that help us accelerate our leading position in this space.

Want to learn more? If you’re a customer and you’re interested in trying out Lua, reach out to support@beekeeper.io or to your Customer Success Manager.

Not a Beekeeper customer yet? Request a free demo of the platform to learn more!