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Spector 360 Helps Clear the Air at HighTec HVAC

The Setting

HighTec HVAC is located in Southampton, Pennsylvania, about 15 minutes outside of Philadelphia. President and Owner Edward DeAngelis and an outside IT consultant manage a Windows 2000 Server and approximately 20 workstations running XP Pro.

The Challenge

“Concerns? We had them all,” said DeAngelis. “Some people seem to think they have a God-given right to do personal stuff at work … web surfing, shopping, banking, chatting, emailing. I believe in being a little lenient, but abusers are abusers.”

Search for a Solution

The search for an employee monitoring solution at HighTec HVAC was short and sweet, thanks to the company’s prior experience with SpectorSoft.

“About five years ago we suspected excessive game-playing was going on, especially with one individual, and at that time we searched the Internet and found Spector CNE,” said DeAngelis. “Recently, when we were ready to see what else SpectorSoft had to offer, the sales team had it waiting for us … Spector 360.”

Discoveries

“My employees let me know they thought one of my staff was spending a lot of time playing games on the PC,” said DeAngelis. “Because I didn’t want to accuse anyone without knowing the truth, I used SpectorSoft monitoring technology and sure enough I found she was playing solitaire four hours a day. I called her in and told her she was playing games all day long and she obviously didn’t have enough work to do. I offered to show her proof of my findings and she declined… that was the end of it … she left.

“In addition to the game-playing, I also found excessive emailing. Spector 360 uncovered one person sending 40 to 50 personal emails a day. With the proof provided by Spector 360, we put a stop to that.”

• In an interesting but not unprecedented scenario tied to use of monitoring technology, DeAngelis recounts how SpectorSoft played a part in the location and return of equipment lost to theft.
  
  “I had SpectorSoft’s product installed on a laptop,” said DeAngelis. “One day I brought the PC home with me and it was stolen. Luckily, because my son used the laptop on occasion, I had not password-protected it … but I did have the SpectorSoft Keyword Alerts feature active. Obviously, while the thief was using the PC he typed a keyword, because I received an email based on the programmed alert.
  
  "I gave the information to the police, and with a court order they were able to trace the IP address, find the criminal, and get my PC back.”
• Spector 360 also has uncovered inappropriate use of chat.
  
  “We found some employees chatting at least an hour a day,” said DeAngelis. “Most business owners are clueless as to how bad the problem is and how unfair it is to those employees who must pick up the slack.”

Working with Employees

DeAngelis has made the presence of monitoring software perfectly clear to his workforce, and added that new hires must agree to an Acceptable Use Policy clearly stating employees are subject to monitoring.

“I told everyone about monitoring and that abuse will not be tolerated,” said DeAngelis. “It’s not fair to the rest of the company … employees who abuse company resources are not taking on their share of the workload.

“Providing employees with a PC and a high-speed Internet connection gives them a window to the world, and some are hell-bent to prove they can use that window as they see fit … to prove they can do otherwise. But most employees comply with expected reasonable behavior … most of them realize monitoring is for the right reason, that it’s in the right direction.”

Spector 360: The Software of Choice

“If every business owner put Spector 360 out there, they’d save a lot … more than they realize,” said DeAngelis. “You can’t comprehend the abuses you would find. “I would calculate Spector 360 impact this way: 10 people at a productivity savings of 1 hour a week, at $30 an hour … that’s $300 a week times 50 weeks, or $15,000. And I think the savings are actually more like 5 hours a week.”

• “I’m not an IT person, but I installed Spector 360 and it was not difficult,” said DeAngelis.
• “I like the centralization of Spector 360, the ability to see it all from the Dashboard,” said DeAngelis. “The Dashboard is extremely easy and intuitive. The visuals lead you to the information you want and need … well organized, with nice graphics. For me, the ready-to-use reports work well for 98% of the information. The Top 10 format is great but for our company the Top 4 works best … and Spector 360 makes it very easy for me to customize that report.”
• “Many of the Spector 360 Quick View reports, like the User Activity/Inactivity feature, give you a nice overview of what’s going on … a broad stroke,” said DeAngelis. “It’s a nice way of finding out who’s working and who’s not.”

Web Filtering “Magnificent”

• “I love the web filtering,” said DeAngelis. “I was not filtering prior to Spector 360 … I think the feature is magnificent. With some of Spector 360’s other features, like the Screen Snapshots, you can actually see how the filtering works. You see the popup that appears when employees attempt to go to a blocked site. When they try to go there again but find they can’t, you see them trying to go there again a few times … and then they try to get around it. Eventually they just give up and do their work.
  
  “One of the greatest things I have found with Spector 360 is to notice a website that’s not blocked by the filtering function, and add it to the list. I really like that fine-tuning capability.”
• DeAngelis said he relies on Spector 360’s “Keyword Alerts” feature as a day-to-day safeguard, but added that beyond the initial in-depth review of the entire workforce’s activities, there are times when he especially appreciates Spector 360’s ability to provide highly granular reports.
  
  “I believe it is important to take a closer look when new hires are on the way in … or when employees are on the way out,” said DeAngelis. “For me, this is a period of high scrutiny. With new employees, it’s especially helpful to have Spector 360’s Screen Snapshots feature to take a look at the way they work and to help them to do their job more efficiently. You don’t have time to stand behind them, but Spector 360 does.”

“From the first day, there was no question,” said DeAngelis. “Spector 360 is clearly worth the money. Spector 360 has cured all our problems. Spector 360 is so important to me that if it somehow the program was not working, I’d be freaking out.”

 

For more information about HighTec HVAC please visit www.hightechvac.com.

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.