With March Madness (the NCAA men’s basketball tournament) nearing its completion, some companies may look at sagging productivity reports for the month of March.
March Madness is probably one of the most recognizable distractions for employee productivity, but it isn’t the only one.
TDS Telecommunications Corp. has launched its Content Defender service to help employers improve productivity by minimizing available distractions for workers.
“Content Defender is basically a Web policy control and URL filtering application that gives any size business the ability to control what its users do on the Internet,” said Scott Meier, managed services product manager for TDS. “As an organization, TDS had encountered a lot of companies that were facing problems associated with bandwidth usage for non business related activities. It was very hard for them to police and it was costing them lots of money.”
Content Defender is housed in the TDS cloud network. It can function as an additional service for TDS customers and is easier and more cost effective than placing a box on site or installing proprietary software, Meier said.
“Content Defender is truly different than anything else on the market since it is housed completely in the TDS cloud and does not require any physical installation to work,” Meier said. “Updates are handled by TDS and it does not slow down the company Internet experience because it does not have any processing power on site.”
TDS customers have the ability to have Content Defender on all Internet access points in the office, or they can customize the service to specific departments, machines or users, Meier said.
“It is certainly a way for employers to keep their employees looking at things they want them to look at on the internet,” Meier said.
Users are asked to enter a username and password each time they access the internet, so it can also be installed on wireless access points and can be set up for visitors that come to the office as well.
Content Defender can be set up to block certain types and categories of sites.
“The service helps businesses not only from a productivity standpoint, but also from a security standpoint,” Meier said. “Hackers are getting more and more advanced and we know from experience that hackers and viruses tend to travel to where the internet traffic is. Content Defender can block social networking sites in order to protect the company server from viruses and hackers as well.”
Content Defender is available for TDS customers and comes as an additional add-on to their regular TDS bill, Meier said.
The system gives the customer 100 percent capability to run their own analysis and develop their own printable reports, Meier said.
The reports can be formulated to show an overall company overview, or allows the employer to narrow it down by user, and or time of day.
“It allows the employer to clearly see what the bandwidth trends are. All of that information is recordable and can be used to formulate records for future updates or changes,” Meier said. “It’s really a convenient solution for employers, a set it and forget mechanism that can truly help their business. With Content Defender we give you the controls, we give you the power to run your own reports and systems, and we host it in our cloud so you don’t have to worry about the upkeep, management and maintenance of the product. It’s simple and easy to use.”
