We are now GSA Listed!

I have not blogged in a long time, to long actually. I have a lot of catching up to do and I will try to do that over the next week. Today's announcement was too big for me not to say a few things about it. A few months ago we made an announcement that HISS was going to apply to the GSA and try to get GSA approved. Today after battling the paper work and proving our technology to the GSA, we have followed through with that promise and our product line is officially GSA approved!

Being GSA listed is HUGE news. It gives us a sales channel that we never had before and it makes it much easier to sell to government departments. We are 1 of 8 companies that are approved for Fleet Management on the GSA. I have to say that there is not much competition. When looking at the competitors that are already listed, our products really stand out. Looking at the other competition, we are the ONLY company that offers a full product line from basic GPS tracking to more complex monitoring. We are also the only company offering leasing programs.

GSA Schedules offer customers direct delivery of millions of state-of-the-art, high-quality commercial supplies and services at volume discount pricing. All customers, even those in remote locations, can order the latest technology and quality supplies and services, conveniently, and at most favored customer prices. GSA Schedules also offer the potential benefits of shorter lead-times, lower administrative costs, and reduced inventories. When using GSA Schedules, ordering activities have the opportunity to meet small business goals, while promoting compliance with various environmental and socioeconomic laws and regulations.


I have lots of product updates and sales updates, I will try to get them out in the next week!

Software Sales!

Today is the day where the rubber hits the reoccurring revenue road. Before today, HISS’s revenue stream consisted of margin on the hardware sales of the CT line and accessories and a small amount from sales of the data pipeline. Today we have all of those things along with the ability to bill our own software. This process allows us to collect a portion of the revenue billed and add it to our bottom line, rather than all of it going to the software vendor. We have only been doing this for a few weeks and already have had an incredible response to our offering. We have already had committed over $20,000.00 annually of reoccurring revenue on the system and currently have 10 active demos going with new customers. With the addition to our own software we now have 3 avenues of revenue, hardware, software and (pipeline) Kore. From a software sale, we are now able to add software to the deal and vice versa on the hardware. It seems like a winner for everyone. We are still carrier and software agnostic, in other words we will still sell on any network and use any software. This is a giant step in the right direction for HISS

CT-100

The CT-100 is something that we have been working on for the last few months. Currently the CT100 only runs on Sprint/Nextel networks. It works using a combo of GPS satellites and cellular triangulation. Since it does not have to have a clear view of the sky, it can be worn on a belt or placed in a backpack and still send accurate positions. The CT100 is currently in the field being used by real customers and is in its final stage of testing. The customers that are using/testing the CT100 need it for a variety of reasons; one customer is using them to track small parts on large campuses and another is using the device for child safety by placing the CT100 inside a child's backpack. We expect that many more uses for the device will come forward as it gets greater exposure in the field.

Contract with Sky Shield

I couldn't wait for this news to come out this morning. Our team has been working very hard to secure a contract with Sky Shield! I can't go into all the details of the solution, but basically HIISS is being paid to integrate our Cyber Tracker technology into a full bus solution. The solution will include a Cyber Tracker, RFID and Video. I am very excited to begin working on this project as we have lots of experience in integration of different products. This is a great step for us in securing a contract to provide a full solution. We expect the entire solution to be completed in the next 90 -120 days. ( bearing in mind no changes are made to the scope of work) We will be having weekly progress calls with Sky Shield to update them on our progress and after the solution has been built we will do a live field test in school busses. Its a very exciting Monday!

Gas Prices

It has been one busy week. I have been super busy with calls with new customer leads as well as existing deals that are on the verge of closing. One of the reasons I have been so busy is that customers are seeing the benefit of asset and fleet management with the cost of gas going up. One benefit of our product is that we can monitor the speed of a vehicle. You may think that monitoring the speed of a vehicle is to much like big brother, but if you are a business owner with a fleet of vehicles and your employees have a heavy foot, they are costing you a lot of money. Of course there are lots of benefits to a company that installs a GPS systems, but this is what we are seeing today. Below is an article that was done by CNN that really explains why employers are looking to mange the speed of there fleets.
The facts presented are very sobering.

With gas prices rising, gas-saving advice abounds: Drive more gently, don't carry extra stuff in your trunk, combine your shopping trips.
This is all sound advice but there's one driving tip that will probably save you more gas than all the others, especially if you spend a lot of time on the highway: Slow down.

In a typical family sedan, every 10 miles per hour you drive over 60 is like the price of gasoline going up about 54 cents a gallon. That figure will be even higher for less fuel-efficient vehicles that go fewer miles on a gallon to start with.
The reason is as clear as the air around you.
When cruising on the highway, your car will be in its highest gear with the engine humming along at relatively low rpm's. All your car needs to do is maintain its speed by overcoming the combined friction of its own moving parts, the tires on the road surface and, most of all, the air flowing around, over and under it.
Pushing air around actually takes up about 40% of a car's energy at highway speeds, according to Roger Clark, a fuel economy engineer for General Motors.
Traveling faster makes the job even harder. More air builds up in front of the vehicle, and the low pressure "hole" trailing behind gets bigger, too. Together, these create an increasing suction that tends to pull back harder and harder the faster you drive. The increase is actually exponential, meaning wind resistance rises much more steeply between 70 and 80 mph than it does between 50 and 60.
Every 10 mph faster reduces fuel economy by about 4 mpg, a figure that remains fairly constant regardless of vehicle size, Clark said. (It might seem that a larger vehicle, with more aerodynamic drag, would see more of an impact. But larger vehicles also tend to have larger, more powerful engines that can more easily cope with the added load.)
That's where that 54 cents a gallon estimate comes from. If a car gets 28 mpg at 65 mph, driving it at 75 would drop that to 24 mpg. Fuel costs over 100 miles, for example - estimated at $3.25 a gallon - would increase by $1.93, or the cost of an additional 0.6 gallons of gas. That would be like paying 54 cents a gallon more for each of the 3.6 gallons used at 65 mph. That per-gallon price difference remains constant over any distance.
Engineers at Consumer Reports magazine tested this theory by driving a Toyota Camry sedan and a Mercury Mountaineer SUV at various set cruising speeds on a stretch of flat highway. Driving the Camry at 75 mph instead of 65 dropped fuel economy from 35 mpg to 30. For the Mountaineer, fuel economy dropped from 21 to 18.
Over the course of a 400-mile road trip, the Camry driver would spend about $6.19 more on gas at the higher speed and Mountaineer driver would spend an extra $10.32.
Driving even slower, say 55 mph, could save slightly more gas. In fact, the old national 55 mph speed limit, instituted in 1974, was a response to the period's energy crisis.
It was about more than just high gas prices, though. The crisis of the time involved literal gasoline shortages due to an international embargo. Gas stations were sometimes left with none to sell, and gas sales had to be rationed. The crisis passed, but the national 55 mph speed limit stayed on the books until the law was loosened in the 1980s. It was finally dropped altogether in 1995. (The law stuck around more because of an apparent safety benefit than for fuel saving.)
Despite today's high gas prices, don't expect to see a return to the national 55 mph speed limit. The law was unpopular in its day, and higher speeds have become so institutionalized that even the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel economy test cycle now includes speeds of up to 80 mph.
Driving 10 miles per hour faster, assuming you don't lose time getting pulled over for a speeding ticket, does have the advantage of getting you to your destination 50 minutes sooner on that 400 mile trip. Whether that time difference is worth the added cost and risk is, ultimately, up to you.
Copyrighted, CNNMoney. All Rights Reserved.

Interview with Alex

This will be a very quick blog. I wanted to give everyone a link to WallSt.net so you could listen to an interview that Alex Ensley did yesterday on the Green Grant that we are working on. Below is a link to the site, but you do have to sign up for an account but it is free.
Have a great weekend!

The link to the interview is HERE

Updates

I have been surfing the web for years. I am more of a geek than most people know. Today I bit the bullet and signed up for Googles AdWords. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner. For those of you who haven't done it, it was actually a very complicated process. However, I think it was worth the trouble. Googles AdWords is marketing service that Google offers that allows companies to market their products online using keywords. For example, we used keywords like "tracking, GPS Fleet Management, GPS devices and tracking products". I think that this, along with a few other ads that we are working on, will add a great deal to our sales efforts.

On to another note I just got off the phone with a customer that we sold in Charlotte last year. He was so excited about the Cyber Tracker I just had to share the news. This customer has about 30 devices on trucks. Last year one of his drivers fell very ill and was unable to contact their offices before being hospitalized. After not being able to reach him, the company used the Cyber Tracker to locate the vehicle and send a replacement driver to take over the critical load and make the delivery on time. He told me that it saved them an incredible amount of money, time and head ache and they would not have been able to do it with out the Cyber Tracker.

I love hearing success stories like this because it shows how powerful our products are and it also shows that tracking devices are not just a "big brother" tracking device. They are able to save companies money, time and help on gas costs by better routing.

More to come soon on GTT and other great up coming news!