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Spector 360 Identifies and Ends Widespread
Abuse at F&B Communications

The Setting

Located in Wheatland, Iowa, F&B Communications, Inc. provides telephone, cable TV, and Internet services to several rural communities approximately three hours west of Chicago. The company network consists of a Windows 2003 Server and 25 workstations running Windows Vista.

The Challenge

“The marketing manager approached me about a concern with one of his Customer Service Reps,” said General Manager Ken Laursen. “He believed there was serious abuse of email occurring, and asked me if anything could be done.”

Search for a Solution

More than five years ago, Laursen encountered trouble with an employee and found a standalone PC monitoring software program he used briefly.

“Since then, we’ve had nothing in place,” said Laursen. “When the marketing manager came to me I went to the Internet to see if what I had used in the past was still available …and I could not find a trace of the product or the company.”

Thwarted in his attempt to resurrect the past, Laursen said he and his marketing manager decided to spend time scouring the Internet for a new solution.

“Following the search, we compared notes and our findings essentially matched,” said Laursen. “Then, through the process of elimination, we came to SpectorSoft and Spector 360. In reading the Spector 360 information online, one of the things that really stood out – beyond the obvious features and benefits -- was the ability to download the product immediately. This addressed the urgency I felt we had."

Discoveries

Laursen said that after installing Spector 360, he “gave it a week to see what was going on.”

“I wasn’t naïve enough to think that nothing was happening, but I was surprised … especially with some employees,” said Laursen. “I pushed it out to our plant technicians even though I thought they probably didn’t need monitoring because they are constantly on the go. I felt they didn’t have time to fool around. But in fairness to all, I included them. I was surprised at the amount of abuse. It was a big eye-opener, one I didn’t expect.”

• The Customer Service Rep whose activities brought about implementation of Spector 360 in the first place caused the most wide-eyed consternation.
  
  “From 8 am to 5 pm … there it was … corresponding, searching, shopping,” said Laursen. “We shook our heads in disbelief. I wondered how she could focus on the job at hand. Spector 360 definitely confirmed our suspicions, especially the screen snapshots feature. It was really impressive, especially in this case. In the middle of the first week of monitoring I went to the company handbook and emailed everyone a portion of our Acceptable Use Policy as a subtle hint, suggesting they ‘read, review, and abide.’
  
  “The snapshots showed that as she read the emailed policy, she immediately began deleting MASS QUANTITIES of emails … then it showed her moving to the deleted files section and deleting the deletions. If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been almost humorous.
  
  “The screen snapshots proved EXACTLY what we thought …. even worse.”
• “With Spector 360, we found that one of the plant technicians regularly started looking at YouTube and MySpace every day about half an hour before lunch,” said Laursen. “Same thing after lunch … so he was pretty much taking a two-hour lunch every day. Another plant technician was spending a tremendous amount of time on umpteen MySpace pages, wasting hours. These were the biggest surprises … the plant techs.”
• Faced with his monitored and recorded actions, one F&B employee went so far as to suggest he had developed an addiction.
  
  “When I reviewed one person’s nonstop emails to his wife, he simply said ‘I am addicted,’” said Laursen. “He would email back and forth all day … like using chat. He said he was glad we intervened.
  
  “Interestingly enough, Spector 360 showed no problem with chat programs. I was surprised by that, but I think that’s because most folks who might have been abusing chat were using email for the same purpose.”
• Using Quick View, Laursen keeps a close eye on bandwidth use, which includes keeping track of streaming music.
  
  “Listening to music is not something we want to ban, but our thought is that maybe we can get our employees to use a media player or a program that is more efficient with bandwidth,” said Laursen. “Spector 360 reports showed us that the employee using the most bandwidth complains their system is slow!”
• Laursen said Spector 360’s Search feature has proved to be a powerful and valuable tool.
  
  “Using Search I gathered quite a bit of information,” said Laursen. “I have one technician who is big-time into hunting. Searching that keyword, we saw he was spending a lot of his time on that subject, clearly off task.”
• “Some employees with high school kids were spending lots of time on college websites,” said Laursen. “They were told they need to save that for personal time at home.”

Despite the disconcerting discoveries unearthed by Spector 360, Laursen was pleased to note that at least two employees were shown to have near exemplary work habits.

“One employee showed no abuse at all, starting work on time and working all day long,” said Laursen. “Another logged very little non-work activity at all. But with the exception of those two, EVERYONE was abusing.”

Awareness

“Since we have Spector 360, employees come to me and tell me that they are doing this and that, to make sure it is OK,” said Laursen. “They know the system works.”.

Working With Employees

After reviewing Spector 360’s findings, Laursen conducted a meeting with his Department Managers to discuss the next step.

“The first thing I said is that it was not a witch hunt, that there would be no railroading of anyone,” said Laursen. “We didn’t find anything so egregious that we needed to fire anyone. We didn’t find anything illegal or explicit, and I’m grateful for that. But we did feel it was important to call in each offending employee and review with them what we had found.

“We clearly laid out the findings so everyone was well aware of our capabilities. We wanted them to know that we could see the things that they were doing. We gave each of them a formal written notice, including printouts of Spector 360 reports as an attachment. We told each person that it was a first warning, and that we wanted them to be more productive.”

Spector 360: The Software of Choice

Laursen described Spector 360, especially its Dashboard interface, as “very easy to use.”

“No issues … no complaints,” said Laursen. “I especially like the ability to install multiple Dashboards so my three managers can use Spector 360 to monitor their own departments. Of my managers, one is very computer savvy … one is in the middle … and the other could just as well live without computers. But all find the Dashboard very user-friendly. I wish some – make that ALL – of our systems worked as well as Spector 360.”

• “Cost was not a big factor once I saw that Spector 360 was networkable and could be pushed out to PCs from a central location … and that it could be pulled down from the Internet," said Laursen. "Those criteria helped me weed out other programs.
  
  “Being able to see what Spector 360 looked like and how it worked also was important. The Spector 360 website did a really good job of showing me the application … getting a good look at the Spector 360 Dashboard was very important to me.”
• “At the time we purchased Spector 360 our IT person was on vacation, so I installed Spector 360 and configured it on my own,” said Laursen. “I had no problems … it was easy to install and implement. Everything went smoothly.”
• Laursen said that he has not needed to customize any of Spector 360’s more than 50 Quick View reports.
  
  “The ones I need come ready to use,” said Laursen. “I focus mostly on web usage, email, and bandwidth. I use Quick View as a tool to narrow down what’s going on. After looking at the Quick View reports, if I see anything suspicious, I go to Data Explorer or User Explorer. I am very comfortable using Spector 360’s drill-down capability.”
• “I can’t believe the difference Spector 360 has made,” said Laursen. “Now I don’t see ANY abuse. It’s a huge change. The abusive emailing and the web-surfing have just STOPPED.”
• “I am impressed with how powerful Spector 360 is,” said Laursen. “Very early in my use of the program, it became clear to me that if I were to take just one of the employees abusing work time surfing the Internet and stop them by using Spector 360 – which I did – the software would pay for itself in one year or less.”
• “Spector 360 has clearly restored order and made a huge difference,” said Laursen. “Now that the abuse is cleared up, I believe Spector 360 will be able to help us with useful data regarding work habits and applications usage. In Customer Service, for example, there are lots of processes and reviewing these using Spector 360 reports can help us optimize and refine … perhaps find a missing step or eliminate one that is unnecessary.”
  

“Spector 360 is well worth the money,” said Laursen. “The value is good, the quality of the program is good. Like most businesses, we need to cut costs … to be lean and mean. Spector 360 is helping us achieve that goal. I wish I had Spector 360 a long time ago.”"

 

For more information about F&B Communications, please visit www.fbc.bz.

For more information about Spector 360, please visit www.spector360.com … or for more information about SpectorSoft and its other dependable, full-featured PC and Internet Activity Monitoring Software products, please visit www.spectorsoft.com.