Believes New Class of Software Can Help to Avoid Lawsuits Like Recent HP $300 Million Case.

Mountain View, CA – April 11, 2005 — Elance, Inc., the leading supplier of Services Supply Management (SSM) solutions, today offered a clear path to managing the risks of 'employee mis-classification' lawsuits, such as the recent Hewlett-Packard (HP) $300 Million lawsuit. The HP class-action lawsuit, filed on March 21, claims that over 3,000 contractors were mis-classified and joins a list of other well-known contingent labor (also called temporary labor) lawsuits, including those against Microsoft ($97 Million settlement) and Time Warner in the 90's. The lawsuits show a clear and present risk that should be taken as a serious wake up call for any business that utilizes a contingent workforce. Elance believes that implementing SSM applications to enforce compliance to contingent workforce policies can help reduce the risk of 'employee mis-classification' lawsuits.

"Most companies have the right policies, but are often unable to enforce those policies due to gaps in the way external resources and services are managed," said Keith Forshew, vice president of solutions for Elance, Inc. "Meanwhile, the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations and employee lawsuits have substantially increased the need for compliance. Many leading Fortune 500 companies have greatly improved policy and contract compliance across multiple categories of external services, including contingent labor, by deploying Elance's Services Supply Management solution."

Companies today face multiple challenges in ensuring compliance to contingent workforce policies and contracts. Hiring managers can be spread across multiple geographic locations and business units, making it challenging to standardize processes. Contract and rate structures tend to be complex, making them difficult to comply with supplier capabilities and specializations may vary widely, often leading to the use of unapproved suppliers. Contingent labor management may not be centralized, leading to situations where contingent workers are hired consecutively in different business units without consideration of the total duration of service to the company or gaps between contracts. Contingent labor systems may not be integrated with asset and security systems, creating physical and intellectual property security risk.

Elance customers use the Elance Enterprise solution to manage large, diverse contingent workforces and improve compliance to policies, terms and conditions across the company. Capabilities include: sourcing rules for utilizing authorized suppliers, tenure rules on maximum length of service, mandated gaps in service, on-boarding rules to manage physical security and badging, intellectual property protection, compliance to industry regulations, screening requirements and insurance coverage.

Elance customers also use Elance Enterprise to reduce cost, and to ensure that external services are requested and received in compliance with company policies and negotiated terms and conditions. These customers also want visibility and control over cost, process and performance.

About Elance, Inc.
Elance is the leading provider of software solutions for Services Supply Management (SSM) that improve the way companies buy and manage outsourced services - one of the largest components of corporate spending. With the Elance Enterprise application suite, Global 2000 enterprises can reduce costs by 8-17%, improve service quality, ensure compliance, and bring visibility and control to their services supply chain. Elance also provides Elance Online, a web-based solution that enables small and medium-sized businesses to easily outsource projects to a global pool of high-quality service providers. For more information on Elance, please call 650-316-7500 or visit www.elance.com.

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Elance, Elance Enterprise and Elance Online are trademarks or registered trademarks of Elance, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

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