A comprehensive reporting module is a “must have” with any employee
Internet management solution. The reporting module’s purpose is to
synthesize raw data and turn it into information that can be easily
understood and used by MANAGERS to manage their employees. The amount of
time and labor cost a user spends at sports related Web sites is an
example of an informative report. The number of violations to your
organization’s Internet Acceptable Use Policy is another. Reports should
provide information graphically and numerically and should be able to
be scheduled to be run and distributed automatically. Advanced features
like report customization and distributed reporting can also be
beneficial. In large or growing organizations you may want to have
managers run their own reports however you may want to limit you
manager’s visibility to data of only those employees for which they are
responsible.
Total cost of ownership,
or TCO, is something that is thrown about fairly regularly in the IT
world. TCO refers to all the costs for selecting, purchasing,
installing, maintaining and updating an application, piece of hardware
or network device in your environment. The last thing your IT
administrator wants is to babysit an employee Internet control system
and become the Internet police. Your employee Internet monitoring
solution should be easy to configure, automatically maintain its list of
Web Filters, update itself with new program patches and automatically
generate and distribute reports to managers and key stakeholders.