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Bloxx Web Filtering Increases Staff Productivity and Improves Bandwidth Utilization at Cavender Auto

Background

The Cavender family has been selling and servicing cars and trucks in San Antonio and South Texas for over 70 years. Today the Cavender name is associated with seven separate dealership facilities selling Audi, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Land Rover, Scion, and Toyota brands.

The slogan “Where the name Cavender is on the door, there is a Cavender on the floor” certainly applies today. Each Cavender family member acts as not only the dealer, but general manager as well.

The company focuses on delivering exceptional customer service, striving to exceed the expectations of every person who walks into one of its dealerships – in every way and at every level.

The Challenge

Cavender Auto was using Sonicwall for Web content filtering but suffered from the product’s inability to tailor individual policies for specific groups of users. This meant that the company provided one filtering policy for all staff allowing fairly open access to the Internet.

Jared Hardin, Director of Technology and Marketing at Cavender Automotive Group explains, “We could only filter to the needs of those users who required the most comprehensive access to the Internet. This created a situation where there was a serious degradation of our Internet connection, largely due to bandwidth being used for non-work-related surfing, which significantly impacted our ability to do business.”

The Solution

In April 2010, the company installed a Bloxx 100W Web Filter, powered by its patent-pending Tru-View Technology real-time categorization engine, to deliver, monitor and manage superior Internet access to its 400 employees across its four locations.

“We purchased and installed the Bloxx Web filtering appliance about 18 months ago. We have significantly increased our awareness and understanding of Internet use at the company and the requirements of our users who need Internet access to carry out the business of the company,” adds Hardin. “We have significantly decreased non-work-related Internet use, increased staff productivity, and improved our bandwidth availability.

The Results

Bloxx Web filtering has delivered functionality that enables the company to control, manage and report on the increasing amount of Web access made by its staff.

The company enforces Internet Usage Policies and uses the Bloxx Web Reporting application to create compliance reports and quickly take any necessary action.

Hardin explains, “With Bloxx Web filtering we have created filtering policies for each department and also each role, tracking and monitoring all the computers in our dealerships. We have significantly reduced the amount of non-business-related Internet access and with the Bloxx Web reporting application we have improved awareness of Internet use and can better assess our company’s Internet requirements. We access the reports and logs every two weeks and can run ad-hoc reports to quickly address, down to the specific machine, any browsing behavior that is affecting the performance of our Internet connection or impacting staff productivity, and can address other specific concerns.”

“We are now able to fully audit Web usage at the company and can look at bandwidth utilization, file types being downloaded and URLs being accessed to name a few. Audio streaming is completely eliminated as well as non-business-related video streaming for those users who do not require access as part of their job function. This allows us to better manage our bandwidth, increase availability and significantly increase Internet performance for business critical applications.”

The company has found staff productivity has also been increased with Bloxx Web filtering.

“We believe that staff productivity has increased as the average time spent by staff utilizing business-related applications and Websites has increased significantly since we implemented Bloxx Web filtering to monitor our Internet access,” adds Hardin.

The IT team’s job has been made simpler with Bloxx Web filtering.

Hardin comments, “We found the installation of the Bloxx Web Filter to be straightforward and the Bloxx support engineers are knowledgeable, friendly and competent. Any issues we have encountered have been resolved quickly and to our high standards. Our Bloxx Web Filter is easy to administer and has freed up my time so that I can focus on other more important IT tasks. We can see at a glance what our Internet usage is and take appropriate action if our bandwidth is being squeezed.”

“Thanks to our Bloxx Web Filter we now have all the features and capabilities that meet our diverse Web filtering requirements. Our previous solution left us trying to modify our requirements to fit the solution’s limitations. We are now delivering the much needed monitoring power and reporting features to help us protect our Internet users and network,” concludes Hardin.