Guidepoint for iPhone: A Service App

For years, we've been working under the premise that Guidepoint is a service company, not a technology company. Yes, we've got cool technology, but it merely enables us to provide the services customers value such as stolen vehicle recovery, emergency assistance and roadside help. The GPS part of the equation lets us deliver those services based on the vehicle's pinpoint location.

For the first 10 years of our existence, we've always provided the GPS technology through our propietary hardware and software...until now. We have launched a Guidepoint app for Apple's popular iPhone and, unlike similar GPS-based apps that have been introduced thus far, we're offering more than just tracking.

Yes, Guidepoint owners can use the iPhone app to locate and control their car, but here's the rub: You don't need to have a Guidepoint in the car to access location-based safety and convenience services from our response centers. If you're an iPhone owner, you can set up an account and then we'll use your iPhone's built-in GPS capability to deliver services to you.

It's a one-touch proposition to reach our call center, and we'll have the GPS reading of your iPhone by the time you've said, "Hello." From there, we can help you out with directions, concierge services, emergency dispatch, towing...whatever you need. (Yes, there is a fee for services, but it's nominal). You can check it out at the iTunes store.

GPS for Powersports Redux

About 15 months ago, we announced Guidepoint for Motorcycles, which represented a leap into a new market for us. Most of us here at Guidepoint are, frankly, car guys who've grown up around the auto business. So we figured that our GPS-enabled theft recovery device for cars would work equally well on bikes, ATVs and other powersports vehicles. Suffice to say, we learned pretty quickly that it worked "good enough" but that "good enough" was not what the powersports market was looking for. They wanted excellent performance, durability against the elements and, of course, a very competitive price point.

So we went back to the drawing board and designed a new GPS-enabled box that's built specifically for bikes and powersports vehicles. We're introducing it today at the SEMA show in Las Vegas (Booth #38058 if you're here) and calling it Guidepoint Xtreme. It's water-resistant, dustproof and features the latest in advanced power management.

Exposure to the elements and dead batteries can render an otherwise adequate security system inadequate. The new GPS Xtreme features expanded water-resistancy so it can be submerged for up to 30 minutes. The unit’s casing is also dustproof to protect its electronic components from even the tiniest particles of dust.

GPS Xtreme also features the latest in advanced power-management, which allows the unit to draw as little as 50 microamps of power without sacrificing a moment’s protection. If the unit senses motion, it immediately enters full-power mode and sends an alert to Guidepoint’s 24/7/365 response center.

Here's our CEO's Rand take on it: “Theft of motorcycles and powersports equipment is an epidemic. We’ve designed the new GPS Xtreme to protect against thieves by making it the most advanced system on the market in terms of reliability, durability and the latest in GPS technology. By combining it with our 24/7/365 response centers, we can respond to thefts and tampering quickly and with pinpoint accuracy.”

Guidepoint Connect getting noticed

Lots of interest in the media and blogosphere about the new Guidepoint Connect. Check out stories from popular tech blogs like engadget, ubergizmo, nexus404, gadgetorium and phonemag (doesn't anyone use caps anymore?), as well as general blogs like cars for girls, I4UNEWS, Slippery Brick, TechBlips and SlashGear. Have also been doing some interviews with both the trade and the general media about Guidepoint Connect as part of our effort to get the word out on this cool new product.

You can read the original release and see the online photo posted on the wire services here.

Bluetooth+Service+GPS = Guidepoint Connect

We're very proud to announce Guidepoint Connect, which we believe to be the first-ever Bluetooth kit that comes with free emergency dispatch and roadside assistance services. It's designed specifically for vehicles and can be mounted on a largely unused piece of real-estate in the car -- the steering column.

Here's how it works: It's a pretty standard Bluetooth kit with a dial button and a hang-up button. But it also has two other buttons that connect the caller to Guidepoint's services. The first button, which has a phone on it, connects the driver via Bluetooth/hands-free call to our 24/7/365 response center. The second button, which has a cross on it, can be integrated with a Guidepoint GPS tracking unit(sold separately) so the driver can send a panic alert to our response center. As soon as we receive the alert, we track the vehicle's pinpoint location and call out to the driver immediately. If we don't reach the driver, we send emergency help.

A few years ago, a friend of mine rolled her SUV and her phone flew into the back of the truck. With Guidepoint Connect, she could have pushed a button and made a hands-free call, then had us dispatch help to her location using the GPS unit. That kind of integration between Guidepoint Connect and our Guidepoint GPS tracking units is kind of what lead us down this path in the first place and one of the reasons why we refer to it internally as "OnStar® for everyone else." (OnStar, of course, is owned by General Motors and is factory equipment on most GM models, so the "everyone else" refers to owners of non-GM cars and trucks.)

We've also designed a slick piece of wireless capability into the unit - we call it "Clear Connect" - that allows an iPhone® user to connect wirelessly to the Guidepoint unit to play music over the vehicle’s stereo. The unit can also be used to control portable music devices (e.g., iPods, MP3 players).

Our CEO Rand said this in the press release: “Guidepoint Connect is much more than just an exceptional Bluetooth kit – it’s a tool to make driving safer, easier and more convenient. As more and more states enact and enforce driver distraction laws, we believe Guidepoint Connect will be a great accessory for driver safety and convenience. Additionally, by offering ‘one-touch-then-hands-free’ services such as emergency dispatch, driving directions, towing and concierge services, we can help drivers focus on the road, while we do the work. We are confident that the combination of Guidepoint's driver services and advanced wireless/GPS technology with Brandmotion's Bluetooth technology will allow us to offer a superior aftermarket-installed product.”

Guidepoint Connect is being launched at new-car dealerships and through retailers of mobile electronics. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price for the Guidepoint Connect is $399 (exclusive of installation fees). The cost of the unit includes free E-Call™ service for emergency dispatch, plus one year of complimentary Guidepoint Silver™ service that includes roadside assistance, directory assistance and unlimited concierge service. The unit can also be integrated with a Guidepoint GPS tracking module (sold separately) to provide stolen vehicle recovery, online vehicle tracking and pinpoint location-based services.

Guidepoint Connect is the first new consumer product developed jointly by Guidepoint and Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Brandmotion, LLC (www.brandmotion.com), leading developers of integrated technology products for automotive interiors. It's been a long path, but ultimately, we think this product will be a winner in the marketplace.

New board members

We're announcing two new board members today -- two guys who have very impressive resumes and should help take Guidepoint to the next level as a company. Their names are Al Giombetti and Walter Young, and they are both senior level executives with substantial experience in the automotive, manufacturing and tranportation businesses.

Al (top left) is the former President of Ford-Lincoln-Mercury, and he brings three decades of automotive executive experience in both domestic and international markets to Guidepoint’s board. Al spent most of his career at Ford until earlier this year when he left to start ASK Consulting, which specializes in strategic and operations planning, and as a Partner in Compass Marketing, LLC, an investment firm. His professional affiliations have included board positions with the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, where he chaired the marketing committee, and King’s College Business School.

Walt (bottom left) brings Guidepoint a broad range of corporate experience, including growth initiatives, M&A and organizational turnarounds, to his board role at Guidepoint. Young served for 13 years as Chairman, CEO and President of Champion Enterprises, one of the nation’s largest builders of manufactured homes. Prior to joining Champion, he served as a senior-level executive with several companies including Wheelbarator Corp., The Budd Company, The Henley Group and B.F. Goodrich. Mr. Young has completed 23 domestic and international organization turnarounds in a variety of industries (tire, chemical, automotive, transportation, foundries, machine tools, manufactured housing) and over 75 successful mergers, acquisitions and divestures.

Here's what Rand had to say: “We are very pleased to add Al and Walt to our board, and look forward to leveraging their expertise. Guidepoint has continued to grow at a double-digit rate despite the challenging economic conditions, and we are preparing to launch new growth initiatives for automotive OEMs, the aftermarket and other channels. Being able to tap the decades of experience and winning attitude that Al and Walt bring to every endeavor is a huge plus for Guidepoint as well as its customers and suppliers.”

New plans for dealer protection and profit

We sell Guidepoint through about 2,000 dealerships across the country these days, mostly as a product they can sell to consumers. Today, we're announcing a couple of new applications and plans that are aimed at helping the dealership protect their unsold inventory and loaner cars - while still giving them a profit opportunity.

Later today, we'll be announcing a new Loaner Car Protection Plan that will help dealers protect the vehicles they loan out to customers. Believe it or not, some customers don't return loaner cars in a timely manner and, occasionally, they don't return them at all. While the dealers can charge lates fees and fines, the reality is the dealership doesn't want to be penalizing its customers...it just wants the metal back. Our new loaner car plan gives the dealership the ability to remind the customer that the car is due back and, if things get really dicy, they can shut down the starter and use GPS to track the vehicle and send police to recover it.

We've also launched a new Lot Protection Plan that allows dealers to protect and monitor inventory vehicles. Cars do get stolen off dealer lots at times, and for mega-dealers, they sometimes get "misplaced." The lot protection plan will allow them to track the whereabouts of unsold vehicles and, in the case of a theft, use Guidepoint's award-winning stolen vehicle recovery service to get the car back quickly.

Here's the cool thing for the dealers: In addition to protecting the vehicle while the dealer still owns it, the Guidepoint unit can later be sold to the customer who purchases the vehicle. The consumer can then use the Guidepoint unit for a variety of services, from stolen vehicle recovery and emergency dispatch to turn-by-turn driving directions, tracking a teen driver or managing a business fleet.

Both the new plans use our state-of-the-art module and can be paired with an ODB-II connector for a fast and simple install. That should mean less time under the dash and, as always, time is money.

Our CEO, Rand, had this to say: "With the challenging economic climate, it’s more important than ever before for dealerships to reduce their losses and seek out new profit opportunities. These new services can help dealers cut losses from theft and vehicle misuse, but can also give them a unique and sought-after selling opportunity after the vehicle is sold.”

Both new plans utilize Guidepoint’s award-winning technology and services; including 24/7/365 call center support and an easy-to-use Web interface for tracking and controlling vehicles. We've really begun to use those assets to crank up the innovation in the past 18 months, and now deliver a range of services for vehicle owners, dealerships, lenders and business owners, including our award-winning stolen vehicle recovery, emergency dispatch, driver convenience, fleet management and vehicle tracking and control services.

Connectivity & services for new Visteon unit

Our creative geniuses in product development created a new Windows®-based application that will allow users of a new Visteon® Navigation System to access the Internet in their car or truck.

The product launch is still a few weeks off, but it's a touchscreen radio-nav head unit that Visteon is developing for the aftermarket.  We're going to provide connectivity and driver safety/convenience services by integrating the Visteon unit with a Guidepoint module.  Once they're tied together in the car, the integrated solution will allow users to surf the Web, track the car with GPS and access location-based services.

We are also going to be the exclusive provider of location-based content and services for the new radio-navigation unit, which is expected to be available in July 2009. Guidepoint will provide the following services through its 24/7/365 response centers and technology infrastructure:

• Emergency Services – customers will be able to access 24/7/365 emergency help to their pinpoint location with the touch of an icon on the radio-navigation unit’s touch-screen.
• Concierge Services – customers can access a variety of concierge services via a one-touch, Bluetooth-enabled connection to the Guidepoint 24/7/365 response center.
• Traffic – customers can get traffic reports within a 10-, 15- or 20-mile radius based on the current vehicle location.
• Weather – customers can get a current and future weather forecast based on the vehicle’s current location.
• Yellow Pages – customers can get comprehensive Yellow Page® listings, displayed on the head unit screen.

Here's what Jonathan Weisberg over at Visteon had to say:  “We’re pleased to work with Guidepoint, which has established itself as a leader in the consumer telematics industry over the past decade.  Their experience in consumer services and GPS-wireless technology, combined with Visteon’s vehicle systems expertise and overall automotive intellect, should help make this new product initiative successful.” 

Teen driver safety

Guidepoint has been doing vehicle tracking since 2002, but we've usually marketed that capability for a specific purpose. Our bread-and-butter has always been stolen vehicle recovery, because we grew up around the car security business and we know that customers aren't really buying a product from us -- they're buying a service that they need. And let's face it, when your car gets stolen, you don't just "want" help, you "need" help and pretty quickly.

That service orientation has been a guiding principle over the years, as we've added convenience services to make driving easier and safer, fleet services to make managing business vehicles more efficient, etc.

Today, we're announcing a new suite of services aimed at the teen driver market. We're calling it Vehicle Tracking and Control (VTAC), and it's designed to let a parent (you guessed it) track and control their young driver's vehicle. With a suite of protection features at the user’s fingertips, VTAC GPS owners can instantly view and track the speed and position of their vehicle from the Web browser of any Internet-enabled computer. In addition, they can set alerts to inform them when the vehicle has left a location or reached a destination, or travels outside a preset boundary. This is extremely useful for parents who want to ensure that young drivers travel safely. Every VTAC GPS system also includes Guidepoint’s award-winning stolen vehicle recovery service, plus other security and safety features including E-Call™ for emergency dispatch to the vehicle’s location.

In a lot of ways this is merely "old wine in new bottles" -- we've done tracking for a long time and parents have bought Guidepoint with the express purpose of tracking their teen drivers. What we've done is arranged the service offerings in a cost-competitive way that should really interest the market.

While we've primarily sold the Guidepoint stolen vehicle products through new car dealers in the past, the new VTAC GPS is going to be a branded product with the tagline "powered by Guidepoint" and we're going to sell it mostly through specialist retailers and mass merchants nationwide at a suggested retail price of $499, which includes one year of VTAC 200 service. Professional installation is recommended (at an additional cost.) For more information, visit http://www.vtacgps.com/ or call 877-GPS-FIND/877-477-3463.

New box, expanded capabilities

There's a news release out today about Guidepoint selecting Laird Technologies to develop a vehicle M2M device. Out product team has actually been working with Laird for several months now on this product, which will give us an additional manufacturing source and engineering partner with world-class capabilities.

Laird is a big company that is known for designing and supplying custom, performance critical components in the wireless and advanced electronics space. They have a ton of expertise in RF (radio frequency) technology, they're a big company (10,000 employees globally) and the know the auto business, which was a critical factor for us.

So many of the people in the telematics business are telecom guys who are trying to learn the auto industry - these days, that's like trying to get a Ph.D. in six month's time. One of our strengths at Guidepoint is that we've been hanging around the auto business for most of our careers. In fact, every single memeber of the senior management team has been doing auto-related work for at least a decade. Both our CEO (Rand Mueller) and our VP of Marketing (Geoff Dixon) have been developing and peddling technology to car dealers, expediters and OEMs since the late '70s. (Sorry guys, you are that old!)

We kind of believe that our automotive experience, coupled with the new partnership with Laird, will bring us huge opportunity in the long run. Our view is that someday, a product like Guidepoint will be standard equipment on all cars, and having an established Tier 1 supplier like Laird as a partner can only help position us in the cross-hairs of the OEMs when the time comes.

Here's what Rand said in the news release: "Throughout our ten-year history, we have focused on building successful partnerships with best-in-breed companies. Partnering with a company such as Laird Technologies gives us additional opportunity to accelerate the evolution of GPS tracking technology that's easy to use, easy to install, and easy to sell."

New finance company client

This afternoon, we'll be announcing that Guidepoint has been selected to supply a customized collections solution for Southfield, Mich.-based Automotive Credit Corporation. Our new finance company sales guy, Werner Scherz, put the deal together with help from our CEO and CFO. It's a pilot program to help them use our hardware, firmware, call center and, most importantly, brainpower to help them increase their collections.

This is NOT the old "box and pings" strategy that is so prevalent in the buy-here/pay-here world. That model is rife with issues --from hidden costs to privacy to overall effectivness. More than anything, lots of the GPS companies are selling their devices for punitive purposes; that is, if you miss a payment, we use GPS to repo the car.

Our model is different. It's much more consultational and based on a "behavioral change" philosophy that gets the customer in the habit of making payments on-time. At the end of the day, the dealer or the bank doesn't really want the car back - they want the customer to make the payments. Or, as we like to say: "Because you want the money, not the metal."

Anyway, here's what Werner says about the ACC deal: “We’re very pleased to partner with ACC, which is coming off of its most successful year to date in 2008, with expansion into six new states and record sales numbers month after month. They’ve established themselves as an industry leader by creating innovative programs that serve both dealers and credit-challenged consumers. We will be working with ACC to design a service-oriented program that will help them increase collections, reduce repossession and collections-related costs, and strengthen their relationships with dealers and consumers.”

Our key contact at ACC, Tony Stallworth, says this: “Guidepoint has proven itself as an innovator and leader in all of the markets where it competes. We look forward to tapping their expertise in the subprime market, as well as their proven approach of combining high-tech hardware/firmware with high-touch service delivered through their 24/7/365 response centers.”


About Automotive Credit Corporation: Headquartered in Southfield, Mich., ACC is a regional automobile finance company focused on the subprime market. ACC purchases installment contracts from both independent and franchised automobile dealers for consumers with limited or challenged credit histories who are unable to obtain financing from traditional sources. Founded in Michigan in 1992, ACC has partnerships with hundreds of dealers throughout the Midwest, East and Southeastern United States, including Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Georgia, Maryland, Florida, Virginia, Kansas, Arkansas, and Alabama

Targeting national dealer groups.

We've added a sales director to help develop our business among the national dealer groups like AutoNation, Asbury Automotive and multi-store chains. Her name is Tara Rahe and she joins us from Procon, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based company that's best known as a seller of GPS devices to the buy-here/pay-here market. Previously, she was a sales consultant at two Iowa-based Ford dealerships, Victory Ford in Dyersville and Finnin Ford in Dubuque.

Here's what Rich has to say about Tara: “We’re pleased to have Tara on board at Guidepoint. She's going to be singularly focused on getting Guidepoint in front of the national dealer groups, and showing them our value-add as a partner. As dealerships look for ways to increase their F&I performance and profit per vehicle, Guidepoint offers them a unique solution that is easy to sell, easy to install and easy to administer.”

Her role at Guidepoint is important for us, too, given the looming consolidation in the auto industry. At NADA last week, the talk was all about the number of dealerships that the automakers were going to need to shutter in the coming 24-36 months. GM, Ford and Chrysler alone were talking about closing more than 1,000 dealerships over the next couple of years. Most of them, of course, will be small, independent dealerships. Kind of a shame, really, when you consider the impact that locally owned dealers have on their local economies -- everything from newspaper advertising to jobs, payroll taxes and sales tax revenue.

NADA New Orleans

Quality rather than quantity. That's the best way to describe the NADA show in New Orleans this week. Attendance was down as much as 40% from last year's show in San Francisco, and traffic in the booth was light at times. The silver lining, though, was that the people who did attend and stopped by our booth seemed to be much more serious about doing business. The conversations were lengthier, the questions more pointed and the interest level was pretty high. You can never tell the quality of trade show leads until you follow up on them, but my bet is that we should generate some new business out of the NADA show.

The other thing about the show is that it's just a great time to connect with other people in the industry. We spent some time with the folks at SMS Supercars, who were showing off their hot new 570 Challenger (see the photobook below), which is secured by a Guidepoint System. Also had several lengthy conversations with the various companies that consult on F&I and menu selling. Suffice to say, tight credit is making it a challenge to get cars financed, much less accessory products. So we're focusing on creating awareness about Guidepoint because there will be consolidation in our industry coming in the next few months, and we plan to be the top GPS company that's "still around" when the economy recovers. To that end, we hired a new sales person from one of our competitors to call on national dealer groups. And we're going to pump up the volume in the industry in terms of getting our name out there more frequently. Here are some pix of the 570 Challenger - a sweet car that thieves will no doubt be interested in stealing. Fortunately, there's a Guidepoint in it!