Scott started at Track What Matters in late March 2012 as the customer relations manager, a job he describes as  “a potpourri of technical support, sales, and general troubleshooting.” His main focus is ensuring customer satisfaction with TWM products and  services.

When asked why he thought he was hired at TWM, Scott responded with “Well, in all modesty I’m going to have to go with my stunning good looks, magnetic charisma, and overpowering charm. I also have years of experience in the IT field, as well as experience in Management. But really, I’m gonna have to go with the charisma thing.”

“Without sounding like a company shill, I honestly believe that Track What Matters provides a solid product that meets and exceeds customer needs,” explains Scott. “As far as what I enjoy about working for TWM, I enjoy the office environment. TWM fosters a level of personal respect from the top down. Everyone in the organization is treated as an equal, and everyone’s opinions are valued.”

“The most exciting day I’ve had so far was talking a customer through an asset recovery. Helping a customer recover stolen or lost property because of our device is a rush,” he said.

Here’s few interesting tidbits about Scott Abbott:
1. He enjoys weekends spent in nature, enjoying the majesty of the great creation.
2. His favorite breakfast is pancakes, eggs, and bacon.

We could talk all day about our emphasis on top-class customer service. But a recent incident involving a missing rental truck really demonstrates how Track What Matters goes the extra mile for its clients.

“A guy who was working with me quit,” explains Patrick Carter of JPC Equipment Leasing in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Carter had selected Track What Matters for his GPS needs through a reseller before we took over the account ourselves in January 2012. While Carter knew that two of the company vehicles contained Asset Trackers, with one of the devices actively engaged at the time, he couldn’t have predicted that his investment would earn its keep so soon. “When this person quit, he didn’t return our truck — he just left it at his house,” says Carter. The truck was a Ford F350 with a retail value ranging from $33,470 to $49,045. Since truck rental is JPC’s bread and butter, getting that valuable asset back was a priority — and that’s how our 24/7 customer service team treated it.

When Carter first tried to pinpoint the missing truck’s location via our Locate Now feature, he found that the device wasn’t sending out a signal. That wasn’t a glitch, though — the Asset Tracker only sends a signal while the vehicle is running. When the vehicle is at rest, the last GPS signal sent reveals its current location. Once we pulled up this data, we were able to relay it to the client immediately. Even more remarkably, we were able to guide the retrieval driver by phone to the specific location until the F350 finally sprang into view.

“Track What Matters was very responsive,” says Carter. “They did a nice job. They were able to tell me exactly where the vehicle was so we could retrieve it. Their customer service works really well.” That’s the level of care you can expect from our company — because helping you protect your valuable assets is our job.

As you can imagine, onboard GPS navigation is a must for any busy real estate agent who may show one or more buyers several homes each day. No agent can know every corner of every neighborhood in a given community, so the ability to get step-by-step spoken instructions and detailed, hands-free map reference plays a pivotal role in showing properties efficiently. Even better, real estate agents now have access to dedicated apps that include an astonishing range of features, making the home search process easier than ever before.

Take, for example, the REALTOR.com® mobile app offered by the National Association of REALTORS®. This app, which is available for a variety of mobile platforms and devices, enables agents or homebuyers to run a GPS-based search of more than 3 million properties for sale or for rent across the U.S. Typical search results on a property include zoomable photos, prices, open house information and other details. Since property information is updated every 15 minutes, users can receive notifications of price reductions almost instantaneously, as well as sales data on surrounding homes in the area.

GPS continues to show its versatility for all kinds of industries and tasks. What about your business? Are you currently using GPS tracking technology in ways that would have seemed like science fiction to you just a few years before? Tell us about it!

Deist’s own business encompasses not only home inspections but also real estate sign installations and carpet/upholstery cleaning — and he says that all three functions benefit from GPS tracking from Track What Matters. “For example, we can find out where our inspectors are and how long they spent at each inspection site. If your average inspection time is 2.5 hours but you can see that a particular vehicle has been sitting at the same address, or a different address entirely, for four or five hours, you know you’ve got a problem,” he explains.

GPS is also invaluable for the real estate sign installation and cleaning services. “We have GPS installed in the vehicles that go around installing the ‘For Sale’ signs, so we can find out whether any of our people are driving at a higher rate of speed than we would like to see,” Deist says. “Track What Matters will notify if you if your vehicles exceed whatever threshold you set up.” The technology also makes it easy to guide drivers who have trouble finding their destinations.

Deist is glad that Top to Bottom Services chose Track What Matters for its GPS needs. “The support desk is extremely responsive, and the installation was easy,” he says. “We have nothing but praise for Track What Matters.”

We all know how fishermen love to boast about the big one that got away. Unfortunately, too many fish are getting away from commercial fisheries the world over, thanks to illegal poaching. Poaching has a serious impact not only on the income of legitimate commercial fishing companies (especially when local agencies react by bringing the fishing season to a premature close) but also on local marine ecosystems, many of which receive critical protection from fishing regulations. Fortunately, modern GPS technology can now make it easier to throw a net over the poachers for a change.

The idea is to install GPS tracking devices in commercial boats, not unlike the Asset Trackers from Track What Matters that protect so many of our clients’ vehicles and goods. Local authorities can then monitor the movement of boats that appear to be fishing in prohibited waters and/or outside of approved hours. Just knowing that a commercial fishing boat has a tracking device installed in it somewhere serves as a powerful deterrent to illegal activity.

This concept seems to be catching on. Many U.S. and Canadian commercial fishing boats are now equipped with GPS tracking devices, and the Maryland Reporter noted a few months back that the Maryland Department of Natural Resources is considering such a program for 2012, beginning as a voluntary situation but possibly moving to a requirement for the state’s fishermen.

Will privacy come up as a potential objection in the Maryland case, particularly since government agencies would be the ones doing the monitoring? It might, but when these professionals consider how deeply their livelihood is impacted by illegal poaching, they will most likely decide that an extra pair of eyes on law-breaking boats could make all the difference between a healthy catch and an empty net.

Track What Matters

Among it’s other asset and vehicle tracking solutions, Track What Matters will be showcasing its Satellite to Satellite (S2S) device at this year’s DUG conference. Because the S2S is designed for mobile assets that travel or are stored in areas with unreliable or non-existent cellular signals, it has the following 3 huge advantages specific to the oil and gas industry: longer battery life, ability to bypass cellular networks and allows user to know when asset moves and comes to rest.

Join Track What Matters at exhibit booth #449 as it continues its commitment to meeting the tracking needs of new and existing clients, as well as aiding the oil & gas industry stay ahead of a rapidly changing market!

For more conference details, visit: http://www.dugconference.com/

Figuring out exactly how much snow has collected on the ground has proven a frustrating task from time. It’s important work, not at least for officials who need to determine the potential for floods, avalanches or summer runoff in more mountainous areas.

Uncounted generations have resorted to shoving measuring sticks into the snow to get a vague estimate, though of course the measurement would vary wildly depending on where you happened to take the measurement. Even large teams of volunteers cannot keep up-to-date measurements during unrelenting snowstorms, while snow gauges can under-report snowfall figures by more than 30 percent. Earthbound lasers can measure snowfall with high accuracy but are stopped by solid obstacles such as trees or walls.

That’s where satellite technology may save the day. Scientists at the University of Colorado are working on ways to use GPS sensors as snowfall meters. When global positioning satellites bounce a signal onto a snowy surface, the signal bounces back at a different frequency than the one reflected from solid earth. The difference in surface frequency and elevation can give receiving stations a precise measurement of snowfall levels in any open field, on any street or atop any mountain.

If this system becomes a reality, it’ll be just one more way GPS makes our lives safer, more productive and just plain better!

What is an ODB port, anyway? It’s a data retrieval port installed on most vehicles made since 1996. This port was originally designed to interface with troubleshooting devices that can read computer codes to locate malfunctions, and it still plays that role in countless auto shops on a daily basis. So it’s already primed to send a vehicle’s operational data — all we have to attach a tracking device that can read the flow of information and bounce it off a global positioning satellite, and from the satellite to your computer or mobile device via the Track What Matters web portal.

What’s the biggest benefit of going with an ODB tracking device as opposed to a hardwired one? Well, you’ll get the same flawless performance and comprehensive data flow you’d expect from our service either way, but an ODB device is totally portable. You simply unplug it from vehicle’s ODB port, plug it back into another vehicle and you’re good to go. This feature is especially useful if you don’t necessarily have to have tracking devices on every single unit in your fleet — you can just rotate the trackers to the vehicles that need them most on a given day.

Want to learn more? Just ask!