Rent-to-Own

Surfing to Excess?: Rental Employees and the Internet by Ed Winn III

High-Tech Hired Help: How to Get the Right Guru for Your Business by Phillip M. Perry

Preventing Identity Theft by Barbara Hemphill

APROfile: Morrie and Randy Otander—Scoring Points in Rental-Purchase by Katie Garza

 

 

 

Surfing

Nearly every rental store is online by now and being connected has the potential of making employees more productive. It is not yet the case where all new hires are given laptops with wireless connections to use in and around the store, but that day may not be far off. Rental store employees can and already do use the Internet to communicate with the home office, other stores in the system, customers, vendors and other employees on an increasingly regular basis.

Employees can shop the local competition on the Internet. They can download product features, troubleshooting tips, extra copies of operations manuals and other information about products in the store. They can e-mail reminder notices to customers. They can trace skips and stolens. They can communicate with regional managers and other home office personnel about issues of the day. Employees who are fluent on the Internet can usually rent computers better than employees who are not.

Having the Internet in the store can also allow employees to waste a lot of time. It can be like a coffee break that goes on for hours. Instead of furthering the work of the store, employees can shop online, gamble, view porn of every variety, check sports stores, buy and sell personal items on EBay, play interactive games, download family photos,movies and music and engage in a host of other compelling activities that have little or nothing to do with the business of renting televisions or collecting money.

There has never been anything quite like the Internet before. Companies around the world now have to deal with its pervasiveness in the workplace. Employers know that employees have always handled a certain amount of personal business at work. The middle of the week can be pretty slow in a rental store as employees wait to see if customer commitments come through and whether the weekend’s specials will drive any new business through the front door. Employees used to spend this time watching soaps on the company TVs.Now they may be spending that time surfing the Web on the company’s computers.

A new guidance policy

The challenge for rental dealers is to develop a company policy that acknowledges the realities of the rental store and, at the same time, maximizes employee productivity for the company. Happily, rental dealers do not have to start from scratch. There already exists Internet Acceptable Use Policies (IAUPs or just AUPs) to govern the use of company hardware, software, bandwidth and employee time on the Internet.

Rental dealers need to give some careful thought to what goes into such policies. This is especially true if employees have had no guidance previously and may have developed a sense of entitlement to surfing during down times in the store. It will not help store growth if the fancy new Internet policy destroys morale on the way to implementation.Many employees will not see anything wrong with checking personal e-mail during the day when they have a free moment. A recent survey by Vault.com of 670 employers found that 25 percent of Internet use by employees during business hours was for personal reasons (up to three hours per week).

And so, the first step for rental dealers is to acknowledge the issue and to begin formulating an IAUP for employees. At the end of the exercise, the rental dealer should have a short (usually one or two pages) written policy governing Internet use in the store which all current and future employees must sign.

Rental dealers can, of course, grab an IAUP from the Internet and hand it down, but an effective policy, one that is going to work, will reflect the culture of the company. It might be a good idea to spend some time informally learning exactly what it is that employees are doing on the Internet during store hours. It might also be a good idea to solicit employee input when developing the policy. The IAUP will achieve the company’s goals better if it has the support and acceptance of most employees.

Here are some of the issues that will affect an IAUP in a rental store:

1. Privacy

COMPANY AND EMPLOYEE. Employees should not have an expectation of privacy on the company’s computers, although they may have to be reminded of this fact. The company should already have policies in place concerning customer records and other proprietary information that the company wants to keep private. The Internet makes this kind of information dangerously easy to disseminate and some new rules may be needed.

MONITORING. Some companies have begun using monitoring software in order to have access to everything that an employee does on a company computer. Some of this software will copy every e-mail and every response, log every site visited and every activity of every employee and deliver the information in real time to the dealer or merely provide periodic summaries. Go to www.websense.com, www.netrics.com or www.surfcontrol.com for more information about monitoring software and services. If rental dealers intend to start monitoring Internet usage by employees, they should tell employees in advance to avoid embarrassment, hurt feelings or worse.

In a survey conducted by Informationweek, one-third of the companies surveyed currently monitor employee usage of the Internet.

FILTERING. Some of the same software that monitors employee use of the Internet will also filter information that employees can access.Web sites, e-mail, newsgroups, discussion groups and other Internet activity can be limited with these filtering devices, some of which have begun to use artificial intelligence principles to avoid being overly restrictive. 2. Legal issues

COPYRIGHT ISSUES. If employees are allowed to download copyrighted material onto company-owned servers and computers, the company may be liable, especially if there is no policy against such activity in place.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT. If employees are given free access to the Internet during business hours, some will visit porn sites, which are prevalent and easy to find, even hard to avoid, on the Internet. Not everyone is interested in such sites and if there are no rules, access to these sites may give rise to allegations of sexual harassment due to a hostile work environment.

3. Productivity

A good IAUP will balance the interests of both employee and employer over Internet use. Employees may be more productive if they can check e-mail or ball scores or stock prices during the day. Some companies have different rules during lunch hours and breaks than they do for the rest of the day. Some companies allow employees to use the company’s broadband access before and after work.

Even if the employees feel that they are not wasting company time, or at least no more than usual, there still may be a loss of productivity if employees are downloading bandwidth- hogging music and videos and slowing the network during business hours.

4. Incoming

Anything coming into a company’s computer system can bring with it the risk of infection via viruses, worms and other debilitating computer programs. The company must protect itself against such attacks and can do so, but the means for self-protection may have some impact on employee freedom of movement on the Internet or privacy.

5. Illegal activity

An IAUP probably should have a brief statement outlawing employees from participating in any illegal activities using company equipment. The statement can be broad and simply refer to “illegal activity” or it may be more specific and list out some of the more likely illegal activities for a particular store.

6. E-mail

An IAUP will have to adopt a policy concerning an employee’s e-mail account(s). Employees need to be cautioned that e-mail, even after the sender and the recipient have deleted it, can be retrieved and that employees need to be circumspect in what they say in any e-mails sent out on company machines.

7. Deletion of e-mail

An IAUP will need to address how long e-mails are to be kept by employees before being deleted. There may even be a hard policy that all e-mails will be deleted by the system administrator after some period of time, say 30 days or 60 days, and that if information in an e-mail needs to be kept longer than that, then the employee needs to make a hard copy or save it to the server or to a disk for storage. 8. Surfing

Regarding surfing the Net, newsgroups, message boards, discussion groups, e-learning, etc., consider making some rules with some examples of permitted and forbidden activities. Be sure to include all of the various elements of the Internet and be aware that those elements are likely to change over time.

9. Administration

A company policy is useless unless there is a mechanism in place for implementing it. An IAUP needs to have instructions for reporting violations with an explanation of the penalties for violations of the policy.

10. Communication of the policy

Beyond getting the policy in written form and signed by all employees, the company will need procedures for orienting new employees about the policy as well as making the policy a part of the company’s ongoing training. That way, employees are reminded from time to time of what the rules are concerning Internet usage.

Rental companies without acceptable IAUPs are not getting the most out of their employees. The Internet can help business and most employees merely want to know what the rules are so that they can do their best for their employer. It is unfair not to think through what those rules should be and to publish them within the company.

Rental companies with IAUPs willing to share with other rental companies can send them to Julie Sherrier at APRO at jsherrier@apro-rto.com or via mail at 1504 Robin Hood Trail, Austin, TX 78703. Then APRO members can access those policies by accessing the member’s only section at www.APROVision.org.

Ed Winn III is APRO’s general counsel. His e-mail address is edwinn@e-bylaw.com.

 

 

TECH HELP

If your business is like most others, your profit depends largely on your computer. How can you operate efficiently without a system that tracks your customer contact information, revenues, inventory and profit and loss? . No wonder you want your computer fixed fast when something goes wrong. That means bringing in outside help.And that’s where you face a risky decision: Who do you hire? . Pick the wrong consultant and your bottom line will take a hit. At the very least, delays in getting your system running will anger your customers. And a consultant with poor communication skills will frustrate your staff.

Even worse, the consultant may mis-use your sensitive business data. Your profit figures and customer lists, if they fall into competitive hands, can compromise your entire operation. Finally, switching consultants can be very costly, especially if the replacement does not know much about the software program that’s already in place.

How can you minimize your risk? Follow what the experts say about getting the right guru:

1: Ask other businesses for leads

What computer consultants are used by other businesses in your region? And are the relationships happy ones? Those are perhaps the most important questions you can ask when seeking out a computer consultant. Indeed, you can draw up a great “short list” of prospects just by conversing with other business owners.

Larger companies can be good sources of leads because they often have more experience dealing with computer consultants. Try to find out the names of computer consultants used by the most successful, fastest growing businesses in your region. Then call them. Even those consultants who will work only for large companies may give you valuable referrals to qualified assistance.

2: Ask consultants for references “A lot of people don’t ask for references,” says Gloria Metrick, owner of GeoMetrick Enterprises, a computer consultancy in Okemos, MI. “They figure the consultant will provide only the best references, so why bother? But the fact is that you can learn a lot from current clients by asking the right questions.”

Suppose you ask a reference if the consultant can perform a certain task well. The individual answers in the affirmative, but cannot elaborate with consultant. “On the other hand if the reference goes into great detail, it would indicate that the consultant has, in fact, performed the task you asked about,” says Metrick.

It’s also very important to compare rates, according to Metrick. “If a consultant’s fee falls well outside the range of others, find out why,” she says. There can be good reasons for a price discrepancy. “The consultant who comes  locally. The important thing is to find out the reason.”

3: Select a consultant who knows business as well as computers

Whoever helps you improve your data processing system must be capable of understanding why you are in business. “Many technical folks want to avoid business issues,” says Nik Johnson, president of Computer Advisors, Prospect, KY. “I wish I had a nickel for every programmer who thought the reason the client was in business was to support his game.” The consultant should know why you want to collect your receivables, not just that you need the code that will do so.

It’s very important that you have someone you can talk to. “If you can discuss a business situation with a computer consultant in normal English words you will benefit two ways,” says Johnson. “On the business side, you will get a good idea of whether the prospect understands profit and loss. On the technical side, the consultant who can explain a complex issue to an intelligent person with straightforward English words probably understands the data processing field.”

4: Look for good people skills

Your computer consultant must have skills that go beyond the technical, into the realm of communications and training. In your interviews with consultants, find out which ones exhibit a real interest in solving the problems of your staff. Good consultants build systems that lend themselves to how human beings are already working. They don’t expect your staff to change their ways of working to meet the needs of the computer system.

Avoid the consultant who shows resentment at speaking with your personnel. You’ll have problems down the road when your staff needs technical assistance. Consultants with an attitude can create havoc with your business. They will try to control how you run your business or they will do something and not tell you what they have done. Then when something goes wrong, you are forced to run them down and find them.

5: Go with integrity

“It’s difficult to assess integrity,” says Bob Avallone, president of Metapro Systems, Lexington, MA. “But the effects of hiring the wrong person can be devastating. In one case we heard about, people had hired a consultant who walked out on the job and took the software and disks. In other cases, consultants take software and sell it without the client’s permission or don’t abide by the confidentiality agreement.”

Vested interests can also be costly for the client.When a California business started having problems closing its books, the owner called in a new consultant to look at a spreadsheet program that had been designed for them. As it turned out, the first consultant had been a sales person for the spreadsheet vendor and had been determined to solve the business’ accounting problem with that tool. The result was the business had paid the consultant $12,000 to create a general ledger, payroll and accounts receivable program that did a poor imitation of a shrink-wrapped package that would have cost $150 off the shelf.

Ask if your intended consultant has a vested interest such as a percentage of every sale made by a vendor or draws a steady salary from the company. But balance this cautionary statement against a counterweight: Vendor ties often mean that the consultant has better access to the technical support needed to complete projects. Some vendors offer extra training and technical support to consultants with whom they have an ongoing relationship. But the important thing is that such relationships are disclosed, make sense and do not hinder the selection of the best solution for your business problems.

One independent source of consultants is the Independent Computer Consultants Association in St. Louis. This organization has a code of ethics that requires its 1,500 members to reveal any potential conflicts of interest with clients.

“Our members are required to explain any partnership they may have with vendors,” says executive director Joyce Burkard. You will especially want to know if the consultant is getting a commission for recommending a certain software program or hardware item. (This is in contrast with certification, a term which refers to a certain level of proven knowledge on the part of a consultant in a specific program such as Microsoft Access. To be certified, the consultant must pass a rigorous exam. Certification does not imply financial reward for recommending a program.)

You can reach the ICCA at 800/774- 4222 or 314/892-1675. You can also search for consultants in your region at the ICCA’s Web page. Tune your browser to www.icca.org.

Following the advice in this column will mean more time spent up front in selecting the right outside help. But the investment required to assess the quality of a prospect will pay rich dividends in terms of company health. The wrong consultant will tie up your operations in ineffective and inappropriate programs. The right one will be a critical resource that will employ your data like a springboard to bounce your company onto a higher plateau of profits.

Phillip M. Perry is a free-lance business writer based in New York City.

 

 

PREVENTING IDENTITY THEFT

In the movie The Net, Sandra Bullock played the role of a victim of identity theft. In fact, she was basically erased from the community. Another woman consumed her identity, taking with it everything Sandra Bullock’s character had— including her bank accounts, license and social security number and even her home. It seems crazy to think this could happen; after all it’s only a movie. But just as fairy tales can come true, so can your worst nightmare. Theft of identity is happening at an alarming rate. More than 100,000 identity theft complaints are filed each year. X Identity thieves work in various ways. One of the most common is to open up a new credit card in your name, using your date of birth and social security number. They rack up charges, don’t pay the bill and the delinquent account is reported on your credit report. They can also change the mailing address so that your credit card will be sent to a false address, giving them more time to make purchases until you realize there is a problem. They may also establish cellular phone services and bank accounts in your name, making costly phone calls and writing bad checks.

Identity theft today is much more than losing your wallet full of cash. You could lose your entire savings account. Some victims are stuck paying false loans and huge credit card debt. At the very least, victims will lose their good credit rating. Most people spend endless hours trying to clear up security and financial problems that arise. This can be costly, time consuming and causes enormous stress to victims and their families.

Don’t wait to take actions to prevent identity theft. You can be proactive in reducing your chances of becoming a victim by using some simple strategies. Don’t put this off—you can do it a little at a time and it’s easier than you think—and the irony is that other areas of managing your life will be more organized as well! Here are some tips you can do right away.

• Never give out your social security number to anyone unless the agency requesting it can guarantee confidentiality.
• Take your social security number off your driver’s license and checks.
• Cancel and cut up unused or “extra” credit cards. TCheck your credit card statements for any purchases that seem odd to you; keep track of what you buy!
• Watch your phone bill, cable bill, internet bill, etc., for any increase in charges.
• If your credit card bill is late or you suspect it is lost, call the credit card issuer immediately.
• Check with your creditors on their policy for stolen cards or fraudulently accessed accounts. You could be liable.
• Mail bills from the post office or official postal box instead of your home.
• Keep important documents—passport, birth certificate, stocks, savings accounts—locked in a safe or file drawer.
• Shred old bank and credit card statements, making sure account numbers, passwords and addresses are unreadable before discarding.
• Think about what you are throwing in the trash. Assume anyone can and will go through it after it leaves your home!
• Keep a written record or photo copy (locked away) of the contents of your wallet or purse. Don’t carry your wallet with you when it is not necessary.
• Create passwords that make sense to you but are not the usual birth date, anniversary, pet or maiden name.

It is helpful to check your credit report annually as well. You should request this information from all three credit agencies (TransUnion 800/888-4213; Experian 888/397-3742; Equifax 800/685-1111) and verify that the information they give you is correct.

Unfortunately, even with extra effort, identity theft can still happen. We trust total strangers with our personal information everyday when applying for a car loan or mortgage, writing a check, patient care at a hospital and even stamped on our children’s back pack. It would be ludicrous for us not to give out this information from time to time, but knowing where we give it out and to whom is helpful. The key to quick recovery from such a disaster is to notice it quickly and take immediate action. Here’s what to do if you think you may be a victim of this crime:

• Contact the fraud department of all three credit agencies (listed above) and report your findings.
• Call your financial institutions or creditors for any accounts that have been fraudulently accessed or opened and close these accounts.
• Report the identity theft to the police. Get a copy of the police report to give to your creditors for proof of the crime.
• File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission 877/ID-THEFT, (www.consumer.gov/idtheft.com).

 

Staying proactive and organized will pay off in the long run, for life in general and particularly in trying to avert identify theft. Keeping accurate accounting records, personal files and paper management is the key to a calmer, safer existence. If you find it difficult to do on your own, consider hiring a professional organizer who specializes in this expertise. Regardless of the stage of life you are in, get your affairs in order. You are a unique individual with your own identity. No one should be able to take that away from you!

Barbara Hemphill is the author of Kiplinger’s Taming the Paper Tiger series and co-author of the new book Love It or Lose It: Living Clutter-Free Forever. Her company, located in Raleigh, NC, assists individuals, families, and organizations to create and sustain a productive environment so they can accomplish their work and enjoy their lives. She can be reached at 800/427-0237 or at www.ProductiveEnvironment.com.