Summit Center
Medical Facility Finds Key to Productivity and Savings

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The Setting

The Summit Center is a $16 million medical facility serving northern Arizona. The center includes Northern Arizona Orthopaedics, Summit Surgery & Recovery Care Center, DeRosa Physical Therapy, and Summit Center Sports Medicine.

The two-year-old, state-of-the-art professional building has approximately 100 Windows-based PC workstations running a mix of Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro operating systems, and seven Windows 2000 servers managing 10 VLANs.

The Challenge

Along with other pangs of growth, the Summit Center experienced the “three points of pain” associated with inappropriate PC and Internet activity:

• Productivity losses,
• Exposure to legal liabilities, and
• Clogging of bandwidth.

According to Chief Information Officer Daniel Anderson, while all concerns were real, productivity was the number one area when it came to causing clear and present discomfort.

“Some job functions should have been accomplished in three hours, yet individuals were working overtime,” said Anderson. “Getting one job done versus three, we felt there was a problem … and at the price of annual wage and benefit packages, it was an expensive one.”

Running a close second was the potentially crippling legal liability involving employees using company computers and the Internet to engage in peer-to-peer downloading. “Copyright violations are serious infractions, cause for termination,” said Anderson, noting that he and Summit Center management are well aware that the music industry has been clamping down on the illegal downloading of songs.

Clogged bandwidth is another serious consequence of peer-to-peer downloads. Anderson remembered an audio file transfer of approximately 10 gigabytes putting a “real performance hit” on one of the Summit Center’s servers.

Compounding the Summit Center’s business challenge are many complex compliance issues specific to the medical industry, including those brought on by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.

Search for a Solution

One course of action in dealing with productivity problems and other undesirable behaviors in the workplace was to speak directly to the employees. Anderson said those who were addressed “couldn’t -- or wouldn’t – answer.”

Faced with a stonewall taking this approach, Anderson sought other ways to gather evidence about -- and put a stop to -- the activities he believed were responsible for the company’s “points of pain”. Activity monitoring became an option, leading to the Summit Center’s first experience with activity monitoring software – of sorts -- a utility program in-house courtesy of a package from a well-known storage device manufacturer.

“We tried it for a couple of months,” remembers Anderson. “Install was a bear, and overall it was just not effective. At logon, it would audit software, really impacting the workstation. Overhead was intensive and end-users are not that patient. Systems were taking five minutes to boot up.”

In addition, Anderson said the Summit Center attempted capturing information using a proxy server program, but found “it was very basic information … very limited.”

While researching in PC Magazine, Anderson learned about SpectorSoft and award-winning Spector Pro. After finding Spector Pro features, benefits, and functionality entirely to his liking, the path of due diligence led to purchasing Spector CNE (Corporate Network Edition) licenses for all Summit Center workstations.

Discoveries

Using Spector CNE’s behind-the-scenes, 20/20 vision, Anderson’s suspicions about spurious PC and Internet activities within the organization were confirmed. Spector CNE recorded and archived frivolous, sometimes illicit Internet surfing, sending and receiving of personal emails, non-work chats, downloading of audio and video using peer-to-peer software, and more.

According to Anderson, Spector CNE’s findings didn’t surprise him. Summit Center management, however, found the information hard to fathom.

“When I brought the information to them, they couldn’t believe it was happening,” Anderson said. “They didn’t think their employees were capable of the type of activities that were going on. Once I showed them the proof they said ‘this is incredible.’ It really opened their eyes.”

Anderson and Summit Center management especially appreciate Spector CNE’s screen snapshots feature. Spector CNE can create the equivalent of a digital surveillance tape so employers can see the exact sequence of everything employees are doing on the computer.

“Recording the screen snapshots, along with keystrokes typed, emails sent and received, and websites visited … for us, these are the key criteria for activity monitoring software,” said Anderson. “The majority of our concerns are addressed by these four features of Spector CNE.”

With Spector CNE, inappropriate web surfing is a thing of the past. If the highly effective deterrent aspect of monitoring doesn’t stop it completely, Anderson can use Spector CNE’s Control Center to configure any computer monitoring settings from one central location.

“If you have someone going to a site and you don’t want them doing that, you just go hit that machine and lock it,” said Anderson. “Then you hear them say ‘I can’t go to this website’ … they don’t know why.”

Of no small significance, Spector CNE also helps the Summit Center meet HIPAA requirements.

“The visibility and recordings provided by Spector CNE allows me to ensure our employees are transferring medical information via secure methods,” said Anderson.

Wave of Awareness

Anderson described some prime examples of the power of Spector CNE and subsequent employee awareness:

	There is a shared PC workstation in one particular area at the Summit Center. In a perfect IT world, a valid user would log on, conduct appropriate PC tasks, and log off when leaving the workstation. In this case, however, with just one individual logged on, many questionable activities were recorded by Spector CNE’s screen snapshots function. “Everyone from that area was contacted and we sat them down in a room and showed them the recordings,” said Anderson. “From my standpoint, it was great. I didn’t have to say a word, but they had to pick their jaws off the floor. Two hours later, everyone in the building knew what had happened. There were no terminations but the learning experience was powerful. Now nobody ever leaves the computer without logging off. And nobody loans their user ID anymore.”
	Even standard business practice in a professional environment has its lighter moments. One humorous event in recent memory occurred when a doctor asked one of the support staff to obtain information from the web site of the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons at www.aaos.org. The employee accessed a “dot com” extension instead. “The dot com extension is a porn site,” said Anderson. “It was immediately apparent and the user tried to close it out, but there were popups galore and they just wouldn’t shut off. I must have had half the staff in that area come to me and swear ‘it was just an accident!’ “There’s a real awareness throughout the facility … everyone knows I will learn of anything inappropriate through immediate email alerts. As far as I’m concerned just that deterrent factor makes the product 100% worth it.”

Working With Employees

Before occupancy of the modern Summit Center facility, Anderson described the work environment as considerably more casual. But along with a significant investment in the new physical plant, however, came a CEO with a decidedly more professional approach.

“For us to succeed, we had to go to a new level,” said Anderson. “We had to rein folks in … we really had to micro-detail some of them. We had to say ‘this is how you will answer the phone’ and ‘this is how you will dress.’ We had to say ‘here’s the box, stay within it.'

“As soon as word got out about monitoring software, things changed right away. A few individuals doubted and actually challenged us, saying ‘I don’t believe you can track what you say you can.’ But it only takes one event to change their mind … and the word gets around quickly … the grapevine is alive and well.”

Clearly, Summit Center management means business, and feels Spector CNE Activity Monitoring Software fits its corporate model. According to the 2001 Corporate Web and Email Usage Study by NFO InDepth Interactive, 75% of respondents found it acceptable for companies to implement a monitoring solution if they are notified in advance.

	“We are completely up front about use of the software,” said Anderson. “At every PC workstation’s logon, a legal notice appears, describing that all actions are recorded and monitored. Users must select OK to continue.”
	With the advent of Spector CNE, the Summit Center completely rewrote its Policies and Procedures Manual and required all employees to read it and sign a statement agreeing to its rules and regulations. The manual includes clear communications as to what is acceptable use of PCs with Internet access.

Spector CNE: The Software of Choice

To hear Anderson tell it, it is no coincidence that Spector CNE became a presence at approximately the same time management’s “push for professionalism” set in motion an overall maturation of the organization.

Along with the change in work environment, a gradual exodus of employees occurred … a mix of those who could not, or would not, adapt to change and different standards. What remains is a lean, tight corporation doing what so many organizations seek to do but find elusive: producing more with less.

“Spector CNE has been so effective at reducing personal time spent on the computer and increasing productivity that we’ve been able to reduce staff by 19%, saving 18% in wages and benefits,” said Anderson. “I can’t say enough good about Spector CNE. It’s power without micromanagement. There are no weather checks, there’s no personal banking, and no downloading of sound clips … we just don’t have the junk coming onto the network that we used to. That speaks a volume. “The price is right, the install is easy. And the time to learn? There’s no learning curve … it’s ‘here you are’: pull up the management console and go. An individual can be up and running on the product in less than two hours. After that, it’s a hands-off package and that’s what I like. It doesn’t require too much attention. “Overall it is just awesome … a great product … it empowers you with its capabilities. It’s cost-effective, and has a small footprint. Also, it’s scalable … price-wise, and scalable when it comes to the data you want to see or store. Small or large corporations can benefit from it.”

If Anderson has anything to say about it, Summit Center management can expect to reap the benefits of Spector CNE for some time. Said Anderson: “When I find a product that works, I stick with it and recommend it to others.”

For more information on the Summit Center, please visit www.summitctr.net.

For more information about Spector CNE, please visit www.spectorcne.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.

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