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Gearworks' eTrace lets firms follow employees' mobile phone gps |
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Friday, 02 March 2007 |
Thousands of workers across the country might not know where to find Gearworks, an Eagan, Minn., company that makes software for cellular phones. But Gearworks knows where to find them.
It also might know where they're going next, and what they'll be doing when they get there.
Welcome to the age of cell phone tracking, corporate style. Just as cell phone companies allow parents to track their children via the child's phone, Gearworks offers companies the ability to locate and track employees who make deliveries or travel.
The Gearworks "eTrace" employee-tracking service is marketed to corporate customers through Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel on phones costing as little as $30 each. Cell phone companies are pushing data services such as eTrace because revenue growth from standard calls has slowed.
The Gearworks eTrace service can keep tabs on workers because nearly all new cell phones contain Global Positioning System chips or other locator mechanisms that measure a phone's distance from cell phone relay towers, said Todd Krautkremer, Gearworks CEO. The system also stores workers' schedules.
Select Comfort Corp. of Plymouth, Minn., uses the Sprint version of the Gearworks eTrace service to keep track of workers who deliver and set up its "Sleep Number" beds for customers in 48 states.
"We know to the second when a technician was on site and when he completed the work," said Mary Cheasick, Select Comfort senior manager of global service operations. "If we're running ahead or behind schedule, we can tell the next customer when our delivery technician will arrive."
Other companies, such as Roto-Rooter, are experimenting with the service, not only to track drivers and update their schedules but also to handle credit card authorizations and payments, Krautkremer said.
Gearworks and Verizon acknowledge that tracking employees is a bit invasive but say that the employer has the right to do it and that tracking often improves efficiency.
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"Technology can always be used for good or evil," Krautkremer said. "But corporate workers already live with the fact that their employer can scan their e-mails and Web browsing. It's going to be similar with GPS tracking."
Tracking will become important as employers begin to use other advanced cell phone features as well, such as allowing their employees to punch a location-aware time card on the cell phone, said John Powell, Verizon's Midwest product marketing manager for the eTrace service.
"You don't want somebody clocking in on a cell phone while he's sitting at the kitchen table eating Cheerios," Powell said.
Verizon markets the Gearworks service under the name Field Force Manager, while Sprint Nextel sells it under the eTrace name. The Verizon service sells for $30 or $50 a month per person, plus the cost of a voice plan and a cell phone. Sprint charges separate prices for the Gearworks service and the data connection to run it, making comparisons difficult.
Gearworks collects 3 million GPS location points every day as workers move about, and its computer servers monitor up to 30,000 workers at once, Krautkremer said. So far, Gearworks has 2,500 corporate customers, all in the United States. Krautkremer hopes to expand into Europe by 2008.
Gearworks' strategy of relying on cell phone providers to resell its tracing service has its risks, said venture capitalist Michael Gorman, a managing director with Split Rock Partners.
"But the cell phone companies' appetite for expanding data services is enormous," he said. "And the Gearworks service is at the core of that." |
