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To: GC who wrote (601)	6/4/1999 1:09:00 AM
From: GC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 767

Computer World - May 24, 1999 Infared System Keeps its Eye on Employees By Stacy Collett 5/24/99 Team spirit thwarts Big Brother overtones in quest to improve customer service The latest weapon in customer service hangs around Tom Condon's neck. As he traverses the sprawling maze of workstations at W. W. Grainger Corp.'s Custom Solutions Center, his identification badge emits infrared signals. The signals are picked up by receivers on the ceiling that report his whereabouts to the company's personnel directory on the intranet. If a customer needs Condon in a hurry, the receptionist merely clicks on his name in the company's personnel directory, finds his location -- which is updated every five seconds -- and sends him a targeted audio message from an overhead speaker. Sound like Big Brother watching? No, Grainger said, it's Big Customer. In the maintenance equipment industry, where the price and quality of competing products are very close, customer service is becoming the differentiator for companies like Grainger. So executives are eliminating phone tag, pagers and public address "carpet bombing" in favor of employee-tracking via the intranet. "It's a tool to reduce time in solving problems and improving customer satisfaction," said Condon, director of information services at Grainger. Some 200 employees are connected to a browser-based suite of tools called ArialView from Arial Systems Corp. in Vernon Hills, Ill. Condon said Grainger's $100,000 investment will pay off because it helps the company respond to customer calls about five minutes faster. With the number of ArialView "searches" rising to 900 per day and expected to climb to 1,500 daily by this summer, Grainger will realize a half-million dollars a year in productivity savings, he said. Other companies offer personnel directory software, but Arial is breaking ground by adding infrared badge technology, said Patrick Meehan, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. "This could be a functional aspect of every corporate desktop in America," he said. But do employees feel comfortable being monitored? No one at Grainger has publicly complained about wearing the badges, according to Jere Brown, marketing manager. "There's almost a peer pressure to wear it," he added, speaking of Grainger's team-oriented approach. But the system does track when employees enter and leave the building and who they're with. No federal laws prohibit such monitoring, said Esther Roditti, a New York attorney specializing in high-tech law. However, companies should use common sense in notifying employees of any monitoring activity and maintain "reasonable standards of privacy" at work. Home \| Company \| Products \| News \| Calendar \| Email Copyright 1999 Arial Systems Corporation. All rights reserved