Below is a Q&A session with KarthiKeyan Ponniah of Blaze Web Services Private Limited.
KarthiKeyan is the CEO & Co-Founder of FocusRO.
FocusRO is an automated, employee monitoring, B2B software using machine learning models. FocusRO uses non-invasive employee monitoring to detect times of productivity distinguished from times of distractions. FocusRO is a client-server model system, where a client app needs to be installed in an employee’s workstation, and encrypted screenshots are processed in the FocusRO ML Server. An enterprise customer can install a full copy of FocusRO ML Server within their organization’s private network or cloud.
Why is productivity monitoring essential for a company? And how FocusRO does it better?
An organization/company is a machine with multiple cogs and controls. Some help to increase productivity and some lead to distractions and sloppiness. There is no A/B testing possible to measure employees’ happiness, productivity, distraction & engagements. With that in mind, we created FocusRO to measure an organization’s human capital activities with multiple data sets. In V0.1 we are starting with basic data (screenshot) and using Machine learning algorithms to classify productivity & distraction patterns of an employee. There are dozens of time tracking, screenshot monitoring software tools available in the market, which are creepy and privacy invasive. FocusRO’s ethics and fundamental architectural design aims to be non-invasive and enterprise grade data security.
A full copy of FocusRO ML server instance could be deployed within our client’s enterprise private network. We are also researching “liteML” client app, Which just sits in workstations and sends only activity scores back to the server / dashboard rather than taking any screenshots at all. With emerging privacy concerns in the workplace, FocusRO is the best choice among existing time tracking, employee monitoring software segments in v0.1 itself. But we want to go beyond that and become an integral part of every top execs, managers, HR’s dashboard to oversee overall productivity of an organization with the help of our powerful ML data models & dashboard.
Companies usually measure their workforce productivity based on overall work output. Why does a company need to monitor their employees with screenshots?
- FocusRO is the first of its kind to provide insight into an organization’s human capital engagements. Screenshots is but one out of our upcoming dozen datasets to measure productivity and distractions.
- FocusRO will provide insight so that a company can know a particular employee or team’s productive “hot-hours”.
- FocusRO will show if a lengthy conference call leads to productivity or if it was a waste of time.
- FocusRO will show if productive activities are increasing after offering a new “perk” or “promotion”.
- FocusRO will provide insight into the times of an employee’s distracted activity pattern.
- FocusRO will show if a company should have A/B testing of employee engagement after or before a minor or major change in the company.
Employee monitoring software never respects an employees’ privacy. How about FocusRO?
In one word, “Non-Invasive”…FocusRO is Non-Invasive! We wanted to build an employee monitoring software that is trusted by both first and foremost by employees & privacy rights communities.
Yes, an employee could be distracted by scrolling through a social network feed, or, private messaging a friend on a work device. As well, the company has a right to know whether an employee is distracted or not. However, the company does not have the right to know with “whom” and “what” an employee was talking about. So the architecture behind the FocusRO Machine Learning algorithm will never do OCR text reading. It will never store unencrypted screenshots, never show actual crystal clear screenshots to managers or company admin. The dash area will only display blurred, (and that is blurred at the server level), screenshots only. As a matter of fact, managers and/or company administrators will only be able to see about the same as someone looking at a monitor screen from 10 feet away. All text on the screenshots are humanly unreadable.
Now keep in mind, our competitors put the employees’ privacy in the “rear-view” mirror, and keep adding more invasive monitoring features to their software. They add screen video recording, key logging, browser history logging, and more.
At FocusRO we eliminated all privacy invasive features.
Companies may feel insecure about storing their work device screenshots in a 3rd party company’s server. This may lead to several concerns related to intellectual property of companies. How does FocusRO solve this problem?
All screenshots are encrypted using ECC (Elliptic-curve cryptography), We auto delete all screenshots that are older than 90 days. Encrypted screenshot files are only stored in FocusRO servers, Decrypted screenshot files are never written in server storage.
FocusRO Enterprise clients can deploy a copy of a complete FocusRO ML Server instance on their own server, within their own organization’s private data network. Their employee screenshots files, therefore, never leave their private network. They can also deploy ML Server and screenshot storage on any private or public cloud, or data center of their choice. This gives companies, truly, 100% control over their data.
Is FocusRO yet another added cost to the company?
I would say FocusRO is the only HR or workforce productivity monitoring tool that actually adds monetary benefit to a company by saving their managers’, administrators’, or executives’ time.
Other productivity or screenshot monitoring software requires high level, high paid, managers to go through each and every screenshots of all employees daily to detect distractions. Unlike our competitors, FocusRO ML automatically analyzes 1000s of employee screenshots in seconds and detects their activities. This saves about 99% of the manager’s expensive time using FocusRO, and allows the manager to focus elsewhere in order to make more important decisions and actions for the company, than to watch a slideshow of an employee’s full day of screenshots.
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