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Agents Are Getting Productivity Back on Track with iPrevision

“Everyone checks his or her personal e-mail at work. It’s no big deal.” “So what if my CSR bought a book online? Everybody does it.”  Sound like you? Your employees’ personal use of the Internet may not seem like anything worth watching—until you start watching.

The fact is, the personal use of the Internet robs agencies of hundreds of hours of productivity and system bandwidth each year. But, the good news is, you have a way to prevent this problem.

iPrevision, an AMS Users’ Group endorsed product, is an easy, cost effective way to monitor your employees’ Internet, Instant Messaging and e-mail; as well as block access to specific websites. It’s a device, the size of an old cable box, that basically plugs inside your firewall and is ready to go. What it reveals may surprise you.

At one agency, a CSR who was begging for an assistant truly didn’t have time to get her work done. That was because she was running an eBay business through her employer’s site, four hours a day. Another agency had some employees with a penchant for porn. Yet another had an employee who was looking for “love for sale.” Although these are extreme examples, almost every iPrevision customer has his or her own “aha” moment. 

Susan Hendricks of Hart Insurance Center in Washington, sensed that something was wrong. The agency’s computers were constantly getting viruses—and when she walked by, the same employees were always reducing their screen. “We heard about iPrevision at National Conference,” Hendricks said. “We liked the fact that we could see Internet usage and Internet e-mail—and that it really works. I remember the salesperson saying, ‘go ahead and tell your employees about it, because they won’t believe you’ll be able to do it.’”

Hendricks excluded access to porn sites, as well as social networking. “One of our employees started bringing his own laptop to work. He said he could ‘work faster’ on it. I told him that didn’t make sense, since it wasn’t hooked into our network—and he already had a configuration with two monitors,” Hendricks said. “Come to find out he was writing a novel and looking for a job. He may have been working faster, but not on his real job.”

Hendricks lets the offenders know that she means business, with message boxes that say “I can see you,” when they attempt to visit unauthorized sites. “The videos and streaming music that have become so much of this generation’s culture really put a drag on our bandwidth,” Hendricks said. “When the system slows down, we check iPrevision to see what the cause is before we put a call into AMS. Many times, it’s the media coming over the network.”

Pam Horan, CFO of  T. Charles Wilson Insurance Services in Colorado also saw iPrevision at conference, and later had the company do a presentation for her agency’s owners. “The system is easy to set up—you don’t have to have a lot of computer savvy to use it,” Horan said. “In addition to being able to block sites and monitor Internet usage, we liked the fact that it stores our e-mails. We’re a totally paperless agency, so iPrevision actually works like a backup for us.”

Although the agency allows employees to check personal e-mail, iPrevision identified an employee who was using social networking to the extreme. “We had someone who was on My Space an average of two hours a day—and we only work seven-and-a-half hours a day,” Horan said. “Now, we’re able to block My Space, eBay, pornography sites and things that we simply don’t need to function at the agency. Because we’ve blocked those sites, the need to monitor isn’t that great. We’ve eliminated a lot of the problem.”

Stephen Moriyama of Hayward Tilton & Rolapp Insurance Associates in Anaheim, California, is an iPrevision fan, as well. “We started using iPrevision to maximize our investment in the network and bandwidth we’ve purchased,” he said. “What we discovered is that we were losing an average of one to two hours per person per day in non-business related activity.”

The agency allows its employees to use the Internet for personal use before and after business hours and during their lunch breaks, and only blocks pornography sites, although iPrevision enables agencies to block shopping sites, sports sites and other type of Internet venues, as well.

“It’s a very benign-looking black box. We connect it to the network and everything goes through it, including Instant Messaging, websites, Yahoo!® mail and Google mail,” Moriyama said. “Internet Explorer has a functionality that can turn off history recording. But even if this history is turned off, iPrevision still tracks it. It’s outstanding technology.”

If an employee attempts to enter a blocked site, a box pops up that explains that this site is blocked and says, “If you have questions, ask your systems administrator.” “Of course,” says Moriyama, “No one ever asks.”

For ease, accuracy and cost-effectiveness, iPrevision is the hands-down winner. But, Moriyama sees an additional benefit. “It brings peace of mind to our organization,” Moriyama said. “iPrevision protects our firm, our people and our data.”

If you’re attending The AMS Users’ Group Regional Conferences, you’ll want to sign up for the iPrevision session to find out the warning signs of Internet abuse and the best ways to handle this problem. And if you’re wondering how much of your agency’s productivity is being lost to personal use of the Internet, you can find out more about iPrevision by visiting www.amsug.org/products.