Gearworks

Gearworks, founded in 1999, was a provider of carrier-class mobile management software solutions. Based in Eagan, Minnesota, the company specialized in location-based mobile business applications developed in collaboration with wireless carriers to help clients manage their mobile resources. The firm catered to a diverse client base, ranging from small to medium-sized businesses to large enterprises across various sectors including construction, healthcare, field services, delivery, utilities, and government services.

The company's software enabled workers like delivery drivers and technicians to connect to their company's internal computer network via standard wireless devices. This allowed for remote management of billing transactions, data collection, and access to customer information. The product portfolio included offerings such as etrace, Field Force Manager, appmosphere, and OnCare. Gearworks also provided supplementary services like phone programming, provisioning, training, customization, and integration. The business model was centered on providing these software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, often white-labeled through major wireless carriers like Verizon, which rebranded a Gearworks offering as Field Force Manager.

Throughout its history, Gearworks achieved several funding milestones, securing an initial $600,000 in seed funding in 1999 from Carlin Ventures. This was followed by a Series B round of $11 million in May 2002, co-led by BlueStream Ventures and Ignite Group, and another Series B round of $21.4 million in February 2007, led by Split Rock Partners and Rho Capital Partners. In August 2009, Gearworks was acquired by Xora, a competitor in the mobile resource management market, in a merger that created the largest provider of location-based mobile business applications at the time. The combined entity continued under the Xora name. Subsequently, Xora was acquired by ClickSoftware in 2014 for approximately $15 million, which itself was later acquired by Salesforce in 2019.

Keywords: Gearworks, mobile workforce management, location-based applications, SaaS, field service management, mobile resource management, Xora acquisition, carrier-class mobile software, etrace, Field Force Manager, Appmosphere, OnCare, remote data collection, mobile billing, workforce optimization, asset tracking, mobile business applications, fleet management solutions