Stolen device tracked and recovered using TAAP

TAAP’s technology has recently been put to good use recovering an expensive mobile device, costing £1,400, which was stolen from the vehicle of one of its utility contractor clients, and was subsequently recovered by police within a few hours of the incident being reported.

Remote management software was used to disable the device and remove any potentially sensitive job information. As a further precaution, the device was monitored and the last co-ordinates of the device were shown, which had been recorded using GPS-related technology within the mobile handset.

This produced a precise location with an associated residential address, which was passed on to local police, who recovered the device and returned it to the employee from whom it had been stolen.

GPS – Global Positioning System data – like that used in sat-nav devices, is used within TAAP’s ‘TiPs’ technology which provides a number of geo-positional applications and capabilities – Current Location (CLOC), Journey, and Vehicle on Route (VORTEX) – which are a critical part of many of its clients’ daily operations as devices communicate their location to a central database at regular intervals.

CLOC can be used for lone-worker situations to ensure an employee is not in trouble or has encountered an incident, because the driver’s location is tracked and displayed on a map. Journey allows the driver’s journey to be displayed as a route on a web-based map, so in situations where a device is stolen, the last position is shown and can be traced.

VORTEX enables better customer service to be provided – the software is configured so that messages are sent to the customer when the driver is in a certain range of proximity. Messages can be sent as texts or emails. This means customers aren’t kept waiting or can return to their address so they are present when the driver arrives.

These technologies allow pinpointed locations to be precisely identified through GPS co-ordinates. They enable organisations which run any type of field service operation to track their vehicles in order to confirm routes and positions.

Steve Higgon, Product Architect, explained “CLOC and VORTEX work using the GPS technology within the mobile device, and display the location of all the organisation’s employees on a web-based map, at any one time. By clicking on a location pin in ‘CLOC,’ which represents an individual employee, a driver’s daily route is highlighted. This means that organisations need to spend less time checking on employees’ locations by telephoning or messaging, because the data is automatically presented visually at regular intervals. VORTEX improves customer service because customers are updated as to the location and proximity of the driver.”

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