Prevent from printing & stealing contacts

[littlebilly]

HI, I am looking at installing the Comunity edition, and before I do, I have a question.

I will be loading contacts into Sugarcrm and a remote sales person will be accessing the the data. Is there a way to prevent or lock out the capabilities to print the contacts? In my experienece, the sales team tends to steal data and leave the company, so we realy need a way to protect the data. Is this possible?

[gunni]

If they have access to the data, you cant prevent them from being printed ... you can always make a screenshot and print that.

[susiewilliams]

Hi littlebilly,

You don't have a technology problem, you've got a personnel problem.

As gunni correctly pointed out, there isn't a way to stop someone from using the Print Screen function, or even standing at his/her monitor and taking a picture of the screen (or jotting down the info by hand). If you didn't have a computer system, what would you do to prevent someone from stealing information? You would make it inaccessible to them. However, the downside to that approach is you effectively limit people so they can't do their jobs well. And what if the sales person went back to the customer and asked for a copy of the contract? That happens too, and you can't prevent that.

You've got to strike a balance between providing the tools and information a sales person needs and protecting the assets of the company. Perhaps it's a stern warning from your VP of Sales that any employee who is shown to be using company information after he/she leaves will be sued (and then follow through when it does happen so people know you're serious). Put that in your employee handbook too so there are no surprises.

Another question for you: what information are you protecting? Names and contact info for your customer base? Contract terms? Designs spelled out in a Statement of Work?

My suggestion is to focus on those things you can control (your intellectual property, covered by patents if possible) and don't sweat the stuff you can't control. If someone wants to steal, they're going to find a way to steal, technology or not. The best you can do is to minimize the opportunity to do so, and to punish them when you find out they have done it.

Just my Monday morning opinion...

[egork]

There is a point beyond which it is not economical to steal. For instance, when a price of repurchasing/qualifying a lead info is lower than the costs of digitizing the screenshots, making screenshots does not make sense anymore. This point may be shifted by technology on both sides of the owner/thief equation.

If there is a database of, say 20 Tsd. rather cheap contacts, making screens showing no more than 20 records and deactiviting export function may make the costs of stealing prohibitive for an average sales rep.
Also using the team concept may help not exposing the data that need not be accessble.

On the other hand, there are always means to get the data if one really needs it badly, as Susie has correctly pointed.

[baigeman]

I agree with egork.

While there may be a personnel issue there are those things you can do to deter it.
Disable export, limit their view to only 10-20 contacts per page so they have to do a ton of work, and don't let them access any information that is not necessary.

After you do that if your contacts are very valuable look into methods of building very high sales rep loyalty and determining ways to hire people with high ethics. There have been some articles on different compensation plans to more closely align sales reps with the company. consider stock options or compensation based on something besides just making the sale.

You can also have them sign non-compete agreements, confidentiality, and other legal documents so you can punish those who do steal. Also consider tracking their use of the application, just make sure you follow your laws surrounding this.

Make it really hard to get stuff out. Only let them access from a laptop you own, and disable access to any other email websites or programs. disable USB ports, CD burning, etc. so they can't copy and paste and shoot it off somewhere. force them to access the internet through a VPN connection, etc.

Ultimately the best thing is getting people with good ethics and having them sign agreements.

[paikmoses]

It's the moral that sketches the character of any working professional. Employees with good/fair dedications towards their job responsilities are always apprciated. Then said, one should practice what is preached.

Apart from personal issues, technology always considers the theft issues. Sugar also provides the features to protect data/information like roles etc.

Thanks,

[longreach]

A common practice is to seed in false contacts and Accounts - if they get a call - you have your data leak in a trap. There are commercial firms that will provide the false contacts, and monitor the telephone for that call. I know many businesses run with up to 10% false seed data for just this reason.