Sponsor Spotlight: Tracers' Investigative Data Solutions

• October 21, 2019
• by ServeNow Staff
• Technology
• Articles

Tracers is an investigative data provider that enables access to billions of public records and proprietary data sources for a variety of industries including process serving. In our latest Sponsor Spotlight, John Lawrence, Chief Marketing Officer at Tracers, shares details about the company, its products, and the future of the brand.

1. What is Tracers?

JL: Tracers is an investigative data provider that has just as much, if not more, data than any other provider in the industry for a better value. The company has been around for over 20 years now and a couple of years ago we came under new ownership and began launching new innovative technologies and research tools.

2. What are some of the products you offer?

JL: We offer a wide variety of searches using our investigative data to uncover critical information on people, assets, and businesses. Of particular interest to process servers are our people searches which can instantly provide you with the person’s full name, aliases, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives, and associates which is why we always say there is no hiding from Tracers (or from a process server that has access to Tracers). We have a concierge white glove service so you can call us or email us at any time with any questions you have. Another thing we do is our customer service monitors your account. If you just became a client of ours, you’re running a search on an individual, and you’re not finding anything, chances are our customer service is going to see that you are not coming up with any hits in your searches and will call you and say, “We saw you were running so-and-so through our database and you didn’t get any hits, this is why and these are some tips you may want to use to find the data.” Typically, if you do a search with us and don’t have a hit, it’s probably not because we don’t have the data, it’s probably just because you were putting in the wrong social, name, or address. We have data on pretty much every living, and a lot of deceased, individuals in the US. We have over 700 million people in our database, over 545 million phone numbers, over 900 million addresses, over 500 million criminal records, over 300 million civil records, and of course we don’t just toss all that out at you and make you figure it out. What’s unique about us is our algorithm that ties all that information together. You could just put in a first and last name into our database and find a 40-year history of everywhere they’ve been and everything they’ve been up to.

3. What sets Tracers apart from competitors?

JL: A difference-maker for us with our competitors is that we’re easier to work with. We’re not a multi-billion dollar company yet so there’s not a lot of red tape. Of course, we’re going to vet you and you have to go through a process before you can become a client and access the data, but overall we’re really easy to work with and we don’t make it difficult to do business with us, unlike some of our competitors. We have the same or better data and you’re typically going to pay less for it. We also don’t have the legacy systems you have to deal with. Our platform just launched earlier this year and it’s mobile-optimized so it’s extremely user-friendly. There’s a lot of admin tools like the ability to go in and add your own users, update your credit card information we have on file, and all kinds of your own reporting you can pull. And if you’re ever confused, you can just give us a call.

4. What do partnerships look like for Tracers?

JL: In some industries, our competition has more tools than we do. As far as what Tracers offers, some of our investigative data solutions can appear to be an apples to apples comparison with what our competition provides. But for some, they also provide additional solutions that we do not provide and honestly don’t have an interest in providing. So we stick to what we do best and have started partnering up with some of those other solutions to fill the gaps and make sure we’re offering our customers all of the best tools for their success.

In a lot of cases, we don’t need to replace competition. We suggest you use both options because there’s going to be a lot of times where you’ll run a search in our system, then in another system, and vice versa. None of us have all the data that there is in the world and there can be small gaps here and there. Many customers have seen this and they’ll add Tracers even if they feel like they are pretty happy with their current provider.

5. How does Tracers serve process servers specifically?

JL: Of course, process servers use us to do traces and locate folks. I think for process servers, in particular, you’re not going to find more address history, phone numbers, and email addresses than what we have. And our algorithms specifically tie those together with specific individuals. Obviously, process servers are often out and about and not sitting at a desk. Our new system is mobile-optimized so you don’t have to zoom in and scroll all over the place. You can go on your phone, use our system, and it all presents itself nice and easy. Anyone can read it and understand it. We’re in the process of developing an app as well. Even though the app isn’t ready for prime time yet, it’s still mobile optimized and works like a champ on your phone or tablet.

6. What does the future look like for Tracers?

JL: Traditionally, Tracers has been a data service for private investigators and police officers so we’re heavily entrenched in law enforcement and private investigators. But through new management and development we’ve recently taken a deep dive into background screening companies and also the legal profession.

7. Why make the move towards the legal industry?

JL: A lot of the customers we’ve been bringing in lately have been unhappy with where they were at. We’ve always had customers in the legal vertical but only a handful. So recently, we decided to go all-in for the legal industry because we have just as good data, if not better, to compete. At a trade show, we had customers of our competition coming to us in droves so we were pleasantly surprised to see that the legal industry was actually ready and willing for us to come onboard.

8. What are some other products Tracers has planned for release in the future?

JL: We’re launching a variety of products specifically for the legal vertical and also for the background screening vertical. And a lot of those are going to be accessed through Batch and API and not even the interface because these are high-volume products. We’ll be releasing a lot of new products that aren’t typically the kinds of products you would search manually; they’re products designed for searching hundreds or thousands of people or businesses. Business searches are another key area where we’re going to be launching some additional business verification products. You can do just as thorough of a search on a business entity as you would on a person. Since we’ve gotten pretty involved with attorneys and paralegals, we’re even developing a new jury selection product so they can use our data to help them with their jury selection process. The jury selection product should be out in 2020.

Find out More

To discover more about Tracers, visit their website Tracers.com or give them 
a call at 1-877-723-2689.