Who in the small business world isn’t focused on maximizing productivity? Sure, it’s not the most exciting aspect of doing business, but it tends to have a positive effect on the bottom line – something everyone can appreciate! We’ve found that having reliable computer monitoring software is vital to ensuring employee productivity. With so many software options available, finding powerful yet unobtrusive monitoring software can be a bit of a challenge.
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Over the years, our team at Small Biz Toolbox has tried a couple of different computer monitoring software suites, but nothing can surpass the excellence of the WebWatcher Software from Awareness Technologies. Bursting with features, WebWatcher is the only monitoring solution you’ll ever need.
If we had to name just one feature that elevates WebWatcher above its competitors, it has to be the remote monitoring via the web. Everything that WebWatcher monitors is accessible right through their website, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You don’t have to go in after hours to access reports on the monitored computer. Forget that! Stay home and access reports on your laptop from the comfort of your easy chair.
WebWatcher monitors every aspect of computer and Internet usage, which makes it easy for you to determine just how productive your employees are during business hours. One of the primary features allows you to monitor e-mail, both those sent through an application like Outlook, and web mail such as Hotmail. If you’re just seeking to flag certain words, you can activate the Alert Words function. This is an efficient way to target the specific content you wish to monitor. WebWatcher will screenshot the e-mails containing the Alert Words, which does save you valuable time when following up on an item of concern. We’ve yet to encounter a more powerful and effective e-mail monitoring system than the one offered by WebWatcher.
In addition to e-mail, WebWatcher allows you to record all incoming/outgoing instant messages and chats. You have access to a list of all websites visited, including activity on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. You can monitor or even block any peer-to-peer file sharing activities, as well as get screenshots of the graphics viewed on the monitored computer. Naturally, you can also block sites entirely from access. Add to that full access to all keystrokes, and program invisibility that is second-to-none, and you’ve got top of the line, gold-standard computer monitoring.
Even a techie would have trouble finding any trace of the WebWatcher software running on a computer. It doesn’t even show in the computer registry, which makes potential program disabling improbable.
WebWatcher allows users to monitor as many computers as they wish, provided they purchase an individual license for each computer targeted for monitoring. All the information is sent back to the central monitoring point, which makes it easy to juggle multiple computers. We like that it is scalable to whatever size an individual business needs.
At this point, WebWatcher is only available for the PC, meaning if you have a Mac, you’re out of luck. We weren’t able to locate any information regarding a Mac version coming out any time soon, but we’d certainly like to see both platforms represented. Some advanced features are so detailed as to be almost unnecessary, however, these features can be entirely ignored if you so desire.
"WebWatcher is definitely unique. It's not a product, its a complete service. I've used monitoring applications in the past and had to worry about dynamic internet addresses, e-mail servers, firewalls, roaming, among so many things that could go wrong. WebWatcher installs without a single question and begins working IMMEDIATELY, and absolutely invisibly - Bypassing my antivirus and all my firewalls! Then as the data comes in you have a well-structured website hosted by Awarenesstech where you view and browse through everything in a way you can understand it, instead of having a collection of unintelligible gibberish on your hard drive and e-mail inbox. It's a great service where I don't have to worry about ANYTHING, and the staff has been 110% there and on top of everything I asked. This is truly a best-in-class service." R. Mettia, Cheyenne, WY
"Thank you. You saved me a lot of heartache. What I suspected to be true, unfortunately was true. But if I hadn't been able to see it for myself, I would have been taken advantage of even further. So, thank you. I've already recommended you to another friend!" Paula J., St. Louis, MO
"All I can say is this program rocks big time. Thank You>" I.S., Denver, CO
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