GPS foils Portland-area carjacking

Here's a brief newspaper story and a TV clip about a vehicle we recovered after a woman had been carjacked at knifepoint in Vancouver, Washington, which is located near Portland. The 22-year old victim called 911 and told them she had a Guidepoint in her car. Police notified us and we tracked the vehicle, which was recovered in approximately 40 minutes. The suspect was also arrested and brought into custody. Our success rate continues to hold at more than 99%, which compares pretty favorably to our prime competitor, Lojack, which uses an older technology and only works in markets where the vehicles are equipped with their tracking equipment. It's great to hear a member of law enforcement say that we were "incredibly helpful" in recovering the car, as the Vancouver PD spokeperson says in the TV clip. (NOTE: Sorry about the YouTube clip, but you have to go the 3:40 mark in the video to see the story about the GPS recovery).

Mapping Updates

The development team, lead by our erstwhile whiz kid Tom Gafford, has made some changes to our mapping system that offer some cool benefits for users. The actual, physical maps we purchase from Maptuit are the same, but the interface is new and that's allowed us to offer some new functionality. A few sample functions: you can roll the cursor over different parts of the map and it will calculate how far that cursor point is from the vehicle. That's kind of handy when you're trying to estimate distances for directions or a quick trip. (Actually, I used it this morning to see how far my morning run was since my car is parked in front of the house).

Anyway, they also added a function so users can now just highlight an area of the map and it will automatically zoom in to that area. Best of all, they add the availability of much larger maps that take up nearly the whole screen. That's helpful for guys (like me) who need to wear dimestore glasses to read street names.

To be sure, the changes are incremental, but when you preach continuous improvement, everything is (or at least ought to be). And customers notice. Within a few hours of the new mapping going live, a customer called in and said: "I was tracking my car, and I noticed the dot on the map changed from blue to red. Does that mean something is wrong with my system?" The answer: No. We just decided to change the dot color. Thanks for paying attention!

We're all in sales.

We're looking for a sales manager to lead our inside sales efforts. The job is posted on Monster, but also on the Guidepoint website. At the moment, we have a four-person team that handles activation calls and upgrades, but the reality is that everyone at Guidepoint is accountable for sales. All of our CSRs do upgrade selling, handle customer renewals and look for opportunities to drive revenue. It's a cultural thing that comes from our CEO, Rand, who's a born peddler (albeit one who's an electronics whiz and serial entrepreneur). At any rate, if you know of anyone who's looking to work 60-70 hours per week, training, teaching and motivating, please have them contact me at brian@guidepointsystems.com.

New flash movies

We've posted two new flash movies that our design guy, Nate, produced to highlight what Guidepoint does. One is flashy and speedy, with a techno soundtrack that we hope will appeal to the younger crowd. (Given that Nate is young and flashy himself, he's a better judge of that than me). The other is a slower paced spot that has a loping soundtrack that suggests Napoleon Dynamite. (As the middle-aged guy, I kind of like this one.) Both can be accessed on our consumer site (lower right hand corner).

New finance guy

Today is the first day of the rest of Joe Moeller's life. Joe is our new CFO, though he's no stranger to the company. He served for many years as Guidepoint's CPA and a consultant. Today, he begins as our internal finance guy, which should help us improve our finance and administration capabilities exponentially. Best of all, he's got a wicked sense of humor and a way with words. From an accountant no less. He can be reached at joe@guidepointsystems.com

Missing person no more

Got to personally help out on a recovery this morning that was a bit out of the ordinary. Initially, we thought it was a stolen vehicle, but the dispatch officer told me that it was actually a missing person report and that the person who had taken the car was thought to be at risk of harming himself. We worked with the Napa, Calif. police on a vehicle that was missing and were able to give them very detailed information on the vehicle's location: parked in the street in front of a house, two houses from the corner. They dispatched an officer and found the vehicle with the driver sleeping in it.

Mother and child reunion

Just got a nice email forwarded from a customer whose wife and one-year old we helped. He wrote:

"After my experience today I wanted to follow up and thank you and your staff for the very quick support today and a HUGE job well done. I have been in technology for the past 15 years and every once in a while you come in contact with something in high technology that can truly help you in life or even save a life. Over a year and a half ago I had one of your Guidepoint Systems installed in my vehicle while my wife was pregnant for simply the piece of mind of being able to us get out of a jamb if we locked our keys in the car or to have the ability of getting our car back if ever stolen. I never thought it would be to save my daughters life.

Today, I was golfing and got a frantic call from my wife stating she was calling from a pay phone because she locked her keys and phone in the car along with my 13 month old daughter. She remembered we had a Guidepoint but asked was so full of panic all she could think of was calling me. I then called your 877 line and got [response center specialist] Greg D. on the phone after a very short wait period. In seconds my wife had my little girl back in her arms.

Anything could have happened today. Just wanted to send a quick note to thank you for your efforts and having a great support staff and reliable equipment that obviously was able to save a life (or at the very least a Mom’s sanity).

In business, it's easy to become somewhat cynical, especially when you're in the fish bowl everyday and you're always pushing to sell more. So it's great to get a feel-good for helping someone out. One of the things we always say is that "Guidepoint is not a tech company -- it's a service company." Situations like this are a great reminders of that philosophy.

Guidepoint in the News

We've been getting some ink of late, in part because we're a "success story" in Southeast Michigan. Unfortunately, that puts us in rare company these days. The Michigan economy's travails have been well documented in the local and national media, and everyone knows that the Big Three are struggling. Our CEO, Rand, has been telling people: "We need to stop calling it the Motor City!" In his view, that moniker just carries too much baggage and aligns us -- emotionally, financially, psychologically -- with an industry that is struggling to survive.

Rand is a classic entrepreneur: restless, edgy and driven. Guidepoint is his 13th company and, he freely admits, not all of his endeavors have ended up making money. "About half have done well and made money for investors," he says. "The other half...not so much."

Anyway, here are two stories about Guidepoint and Rand. One is from the Oakland Business Review and the other from an online publication called MetroMode Media.

Buy-here-pay-here product

There are an awful lot of GPS vendors out there that focus on the used-car dealer channel, also known as the "buy-here-pay-here" channel. I'm not sure I really get the value proposition because they sell a unit and then every time the dealer "pings" the unit, they charge them for a hit -- usually 50 cents or $1. The dealers use the GPS location if they need to repossess the car, which I get, but that amount of airtime alone isn't enough to make the business model work. We're all like cell phone companies, so we effectively sell data and, in our case, services. For this buy here pay here business, unless the dealers are tracking the vehicle regularly, it doesn't really make it that worthwhile as a business endeavor. That's not to say there aren't other worthy business applications for this market, but it's not as simple as selling a black box and some pings.

New website

We've done something of a minor overhaul of the consumer website to make it more navigable and better showcase our core business: stolen vehicle recovery. Some key changes:

• Dealer Login is now located at the top of the page for quick access
• We are including stolen vehicle recovery stories on the homepage
• Easier navigation will help consumers and dealers use the tools online
• Dealers will be able to use the improved features as a selling tool.

As always, your feedback and comments are appreciated. Email us at marketing@guidepointsystems.com.

Blogging Guidepoint

Does Guidepoint really need a space of it's own in the blogosphere? That's not even a rhetorical question, because I'm not sure the answer is yes. But we'll do it anyway, because having a blog will give us the opportunity to communicate more frequently and strategically with the people who matter most to us: employees, customers, vendors and investors.

We're a growth company, and that means near constant change. The intent, then, of this blog is to communicate more of those changes and the "stuff" that's going on more regularly. We'll start today, but will probably not be posting regularly until we hit July. Feedback is welcome via posting comments -- you can be as brutal as you want, but keep it clean, okay -- or via email at brian@guidepointsystems.com.