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Practices from leading companies on how large-screen monitors contribute
to improved efficiency, effectiveness and ergonomics.
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U.K.-based British Petroleum Co. p.l.c. has set
17 inches as the corporate standard for its new
IT infrastructure being rolled out to 30,000 desktops
worldwide. It has also deployed 1,000 high-end
workstations with 17-inch multimedia monitors
to support a global desktop videoconferencing
capability.
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When CDW Computer Centers, Inc. in Vernon, Ill.,
implemented new applications two years ago to
improve the effectiveness of its sales staff,
it upgraded to 17-inch monitors company-wide.
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Headquartered in Midland, Mich., the Dow Chemical
Co.'s global IT infrastructure implementation
in 1995 included the option of a high-end workstation
with a 17-inch monitor. Today its Global Ergonomics
Team is studying whether the 17-inch monitor should
be used for all employees who work at computers
more than two hours a day.
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As a result of a new IT infrastructure, all 1,200
sales, support and management staff at Tempe,
Ariz.-based Insight Enterprises, Inc. will have
17-inch or larger monitors to support the company's
new proprietary applications and "paperless"
office initiative.
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"When people have the best tools they are more willing
to try new things with them."
- Eric Crown, Insight Enterprises CEO
Taking a big-picture view of the value of information technology,
the four firms described at left attach clear benefits to
using large-screen monitors (see sidebar next page). When
Eric Crown, CEO and chairman of Insight Enterprises, was asked
what he would tell other CEOs about the value of large-screen
monitors, he replied, "Investing in your employees will
yield results that are not always as visible as a 17-inch
monitor. The visible results are that employees can now multitask
several applications on their desktops at once, increasing
their operational excellence."
The four cases presented here on the benefits of large-screen
monitors come from a recent study conducted by ICEX, Inc.,
an independent research firm based in Boston. The experiences
of these leading companies provide compelling evidence that
large-screen monitors are an important component of an infrastructure
that enables employees to increase productivity and deliver
high-quality work. Today, bigger screens and higher resolution
images are crucial not only for specialized functions such
as computer-aided design and graphic design but for all high-performance
professionals in applications environments.
PRODUCTIVITY, QUALITY BENEFITS
From a manager's perspective, large-screen monitors are associated
with significant productivity and work quality benefits. In
Insight Enterprises' product management group, for instance,
larger screens have helped a group of eight people achieve
a 50% to 100% rote productivity improvement in entering product
information. This translates to a cost savings of about $20,000
per month, according to the director of product management.
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For a British Petroleum oil refinery in Germany, the high-end workstations
with 17-inch multimedia monitors that are part of the company's
global Virtual Teamwork initiative paid for themselves in a single
use. [Under the Virtual Teamwork initiative, designed to facilitate
collaboration and knowledge sharing, the company deployed desktop
videoconferencing and groupware capabilities to about 1,000 employees
worldwide.] Following a shutdown in the German refinery, the engineers
were uncertain of the cause, but suspected a fault in a specific,
expensive part. Engineers used the desktop videoconferencing capability
to connect to a BP expert in London, who, by examining the part
on his VT workstation determined it was not at fault, thus saving
the refinery about $250,000.
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Once managers acknowledge that their employees spend much
of their work day at the computer, ergonomic benefits take
on greater importance. According to a manager at CDW, when
you spend as many hours a day using PCs as his group does
Р typically, seven hours or more Р being able to work without
eyestrain matters. And fatigue can lead to errors. The manager
who leads Dow Chemical's Global Ergonomics Team said large-screen
monitors can reduce physical strain because less scrolling
means less "mousing" and fewer keystrokes.
Increasingly, managers view large-screen monitors as an important
component of the powerful workstations their employees need
to do their jobs effectively. Don Gordon, vice president of
advertising at CDW, said it's practical to give his marketing
staff large monitors because of the vast amount of information
they deal with. In his department, 17-inch monitors are the
standard, with 20- or 21-inch screens used for specialized
applications such as graphic design or complex multitasking.
The requests he has received for larger monitors are legitimate;
he believes it's important to provide the proper tools to
boost quality and productivity.
From the perspective of staff who use 17- to 21-inch monitors,
having a larger screen saves time, makes applications easier
to use and reduces eyestrain. Estimates on time savings from
reduced scrolling range from 10% to 25%. Multitasking has
become a normal mode of operation as employees mix E-mail,
Web applications, word processors and electronic calendars,
as well as the applications specific to their jobs. All users
interviewed agree: Larger screens make it easier to see more
of what you"re working on and easier to work with multiple
windows.
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When we use the term "large screen, we refer
to monitors 17 to 21 inches in size (the diagonal
length of the screen). For a number of years,
14- or 15-inch screens have been the standard
size for business users. The jump from a 14- to
a 17-inch monitor increases the viewing area by
almost 50%. More screen real estate combined with
higher resolution gives users a larger virtual
work space.
Resolution is a measure of the number of pixels
that appear on the screen; more pixels allows
greater resolution. The typical 14-inch monitor
provides 800 x 600 resolution; the typical 17-inch
SVGA monitor provides 1,024 x 768 to 1,280 x 1,024
resolution. Other factors in selecting a monitor
include dot pitch and refresh rate. Dot pitch
measures the distance between phosphor dots on
the screen; the closer together, the sharper the
image. Refresh rate (or vertical frequency), measured
in Hertz (Hz), indicates how quickly the screen
of pixels gets repainted. The higher the refresh
rate (recommended at 75Hz or above), the less
flickering.
The average price for a 17-inch monitor is about
$500; 21-inch monitors sell for around $1,300.
Large-screen monitors typically come with additional
features not found on 14-inch models - such as
digital controls. The relatively new 19-inch category
is priced in the $850 to $1,000 range and meets
the technical needs of the 21-inch user while
still fitting the budget and desktop footprint
allowances of the 17-inch customer.
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"You can read faster than you can scroll, because your eyes
and brain work faster than your hand," said one user. The people
who use large-screen monitors find them valuable tools and say they
cannot imagine going back to 15-inch versions.
AN EMERGING STANDARD
British Petroleum, Insight, and CDW have made 17-inch monitors
the standard for their IT infrastructures, and they view their infrastructures
as critical to their business capability. The three firms saw the
need for increased screen real estate, given the shift in their
applications environments toward more graphical interfaces, multitasking
and multimedia. At Dow, where 15-inch monitors are still the standard,
about 15% of their workstations are high-end PCs with 17-inch monitors.
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British Petroleum British Petroleum Co. p.l.c.
is the world's third largest oil company with
revenues of $70 billion. The company's business
strategy is to focus on growth and operate in
a more decentralized, fast-moving organizational
structure. In support of this strategy, British
Petroleum began a Virtual Teamwork (VT) initiative
in 1995 that links teams of geographically dispersed
staff who need to collaborate and share expertise.
The initiative included provisioning 1,000 employees
with desktop videoconferencing systems and 17-inch
multimedia monitors so they could share documents
and applications with colleagues thousands of
miles away. The company is considering upgrading
the VT standard to larger monitors. For its recently
deployed global IT infrastructure of more than
30,000 desktops, British Petroleum also standardized
on a 17-inch monitor.
The benefits BP has seen from larger monitors
include time savings for personal and group productivity.
One BP staff member, for example, said she has
realized a 12% time savings with the 17-inch monitor,
because much of her work involves using several
applications at once, and the larger screen reduces
scrolling and eyestrain. A project manager on
BP's major initiative to develop the Andrew oil
and gas field in the North Sea said the key benefit
he saw from the project team's use of VT was an
improvement in communications quality. Since the
team was dispersed across London, Aberdeen and
the North Sea, the large-monitor component of
VT let team members see the same documents as
well as each other. The VT system saved time and
played a part in helping the team complete the
Andrew platform ahead of schedule, resulting in
enormous cost savings. As team members said after
the project, there was "no dispute that [VT]
paid for itself.
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British Petroleum adopted 17-inch monitors as the standard
for its new common IT infrastructure. The decision was driven
by the growing use of intranets, the Internet and multimedia.
The decision was also consistent with the company's view that
buying higher end products is more economical because the
product will last longer in the face of rapidly changing technology.
Insight is also completing the rollout of a new IT infrastructure
that senior management considers an important part of the
long-term investment required to enable their business strategies.
All 1,200 employees are getting Pentium-based PCs with 17-inch
monitors. The major impetus came when Insight decided to change
its proprietary transaction-processing and product information
system from a text- to a graphical-based interface, where
increased multitasking would be the rule. Insight is also
implementing a corporate intranet designed to replace paper
as the vehicle for all internal communications. In response,
the company expects computer use in general, and multitasking
in particular, to increase.
About two years ago, CDW acquired 17-inch monitors for all
sales personnel (now at about 400 people) and other key staff.
The driver was the need to support CDW's new sales system;
larger monitors would permit more information to be visible
on the screen. CDW considers its information systems essential
to serving customers, maintaining business controls and keeping
its cost structure low. The vice president of advertising
said CDW is'totally dependent on technology."
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MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE: JUSTIFYING LARGE SCREENS
Application requirements. The managers and executives interviewed
at the four companies were asked what justified the acquisition
of large-screen monitors and what benefits were achieved. In general,
justification is viewed more as a question of need and affordability
than explicit return on investment. The perceived requirements of
applications are driving the move to larger screen sizes. For example,
the developers of CDW's new sales system looked at all the information
they wanted to appear on the screen, and the question quickly became
whether they should omit items or use larger monitors. At Insight,
the initial assumption was to use smaller monitors because they
were relatively inexpensive and would take up less room on the desk.
But once business and IS managers saw what the application involved,
it was obvious that larger monitors were needed.
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Productivity and quality benefits. In addition to
the time and money savings cited earlier by Insight and BP,
managers cited other indicators of productivity and quality
benefits. For the vice president who heads CDW's marketing
department, the bottom line justifying large-screen monitors
is quality. The quality of CDW's advertising materials has
improved over the past few years, and the VP attributes this
in part to the large screens. A typical catalog page contains
a lot of information, and the layout must be pleasing to the
eye. Catalog designers need to fine-tune many small details
to create effective advertising.
CDW's vice president is also very concerned with the accuracy
of the product information his staff maintains. With the information
on thousands of products now available on their Web site,
even relatively minor inaccuracies, such as misspellings,
must be avoided. Being able to see an entire product database
record on a 17-inch monitor makes it easier to ensure accuracy.
For British Petroleum's Virtual Teamwork initiative, the
selection of large-screen monitors was driven by desktop videoconferencing.
For the application to be effective, the monitor size needed
to accommodate as large an image of the videoconferencing
participant as possible, as well as display other applications
Р such as shared whiteboards.
For Insight's director of graphic design, the biggest benefit
of large screens is increased control over image quality and
the production process. Using large-screen monitors and powerful
PCs, they now have the proper tools in-house to accomplish
the parts of the design process they used to outsource. This
not only cuts total production time, but makes it much easier
for last-minute changes. In short, better quality work is
being done more efficiently, he said.
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CDW Computer Centers The developers of CDW's
new sales system looked at all the information
they wanted to appear on the screen, and the question
quickly became whether they should omit items
or use larger monitors.
CDW Computer Centers, Inc. is a leading direct
marketer of brand name microcomputer products
in the United States. With revenue of $928 million
in 1996 and a compound sales growth of 50% over
the past five years, the company continues to
set ambitious growth targets while maintaining
its profile as a low-cost operator with superior
customer service.
The pace at CDW is fast and demanding. In any
given month, CDW product specialists add 600 new
products to their product offerings database.
The information must be error-free yet quickly
available on the company's Web site. At the same
time, CDW's catalogs and advertising materials
must be attractively designed and color balanced.
To produce 30 versions of various catalogs each
year while continually adding new products demands
data-intensive computer work.
CDW sees information systems as essential to
its competitive edge, with tools such as large-screen
monitors as practical investments for improving
employee productivity. As a result, CDW has made
17-inch monitors the standard for its 400-member
sales staff. The company's manager of graphic
design estimates that without the tools they currently
use Р the large monitors, software and powerful
Macintoshes Р her staff would be 50% less productive.
Moreover, they could not produce the same quality
and quantity of work under their tight deadlines.
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Ergonomic benefits. Managers also recognize the ergonomic
benefits of large-screen monitors and value the positive impact
on morale that results from improving employees' working environments.
Dow's Global Ergonomics Team is gathering evidence on why larger
screen monitors are now needed, looking at issues such as eyestrain
from small text and increased eye movement from scrolling. The manager
leading the team also expects that having to scroll less will reduce
keystrokes and mouse movement. She noted that head/arm/ shoulder
problems are a significant portion of reported injuries for employees
in office settings.
Insight CEO Crown said that some of the benefits he has seen from
large-screen monitors relate to "employee morale and increased
acceptance of new PC technology. When people have the best tools
they are more willing to try new things with them."
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USER PERSPECTIVE: LARGE SCREEN ADVANTAGES
Users of 17- to 21-inch monitors have no trouble citing how
large-screen monitors help them in their work, supporting
management's views on benefits.
Multitasking a way of life. Everyone interviewed used
multiple applications on a regular basis, including E-mail,
word processors, Web browsers and spreadsheets as well as
more specialized applications for desktop publishing, databases
and transaction processing. Users said having larger screens
makes it easier to work with multiple applications, whether
they want to see all the icons available, switch among open
windows or view the contents of multiple windows simultaneously.
A staff member at British Petroleum who frequently uses desktop
videoconferencing typically has one-quarter of her screen
displaying the video image of the person with whom she is
"meeting" and the rest of the screen divided between
a shared text document and an electronic notebook. This could
not be done effectively with a smaller screen, she said.
At Insight, larger screens let sales people have several
applications open at once, enabling them to work simultaneously
with a contact management application, the product database,
the company's intranet and vendors' Internet Web pages.
Less scrolling saves time. Almost everyone interviewed
said having to scroll less was one of the biggest advantages
of a large-screen monitor; reduced scrolling made them more
productive. Product specialists at CDW, for instance, would
spend 20% more time scrolling if they did not have 17-inch
screens, according to their supervisor. Two graphic designers
at Insight estimated time savings of 10% and 25%, respectively,
after upgrading from 17- to 21-inch monitors. At Dow, an office
professional using a 21-inch monitor estimated a 20% to 30%
time savings because of less scrolling, fewer "next page"
keystrokes and being able to have more windows open simultaneously.
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Dow Chemical Dow Chemical Co., a $20 billion
global giant with 40,300 employees, manufactures
and supplies chemicals, plastics, agricultural
products, consumer goods and environmental services
for customers in 157 countries. When Dow deployed
a global IT infrastructure in 1995, it set general
guidelines for allowing individual departments
to choose a mix of standard workstations with
15-inch monitors and high-end workstations with
17-inch monitors. Today Dow's Global Ergonomics
Team is considering recommending that the 17-inch
monitor become the minimum standard for employees
using a computer more than two hours a day. The
manager leading the team expects that use of larger
monitors, by reducing keystrokes and mouse movement,
will lead to a decrease in workstation-related
injuries.
Dow is also starting to use Microsoft Corp.'s
NetMeeting document sharing tool, which lets everyone
be on the same page during telephone conference
calls, and is most effective on larger monitors.
The larger monitor lets small groups participate
at a single site and still have a good view of
what's on the screen. Dow has already realized
cost savings from NetMeeting and the larger monitors,
calculated in reduced travel time. Some individuals
at Dow who are involved in global team meetings
are considering upgrading their screen sizes from
15- to 17-inch or larger, primarily because of
the growing use of applications such as NetMeeting.
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Almost everyone interviewed said having to scroll less
was one of the biggest advantages of a large-screen monitor.
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Applications easier to use. The ability to see more of what
you are working on makes it easier to use the application, users
said, with a positive effect on effectiveness and quality. A 17-inch
monitor makes applications such as CDW's AS400-based product database
easier to use because product specialists can now see a full record
at a time. The higher resolution and refresh rate as well as larger
screen real estate enhance ease of use, said the product specialists'
supervisor.
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Insight Enterprises Insight Enterprises, Inc.
is a fast-growing direct marketer of microcomputer
products. Its revenue has nearly doubled over
the past two years from $245 million to more than
$485 million in fiscal 1997. The firm makes extensive
use of IT to support customer relationships, cut
costs, streamline order processing and facilitate
online commerce for its 50,000 products. "We
have always [had] a philosophy of using technology
to sell technology, said CEO Eric Crown. "We
also believe that technology increases customer
service levels while reducing costs.У
Insight's product management group, which is
responsible for selecting and pricing the products
Insight sells, uses 17-inch monitors so they can
work with multiple windows open at the same time.
This benefit is a valuable tool for the staff,
who use Insight's proprietary operational system
to access the product database while simultaneously
accessing vendors' Web pages. Bryan Ellis, director
of product management, has seen his staff's productivity
increase dramatically since they began using large-screen
monitors. Tracking the number of attributes input,
Ellis has seen his staff increase daily input
from 800 to between 1,500 and 2000. Although the
gains cannot be attributed solely to larger screens,
Ellis estimates a 50% to 100% improvement in the
productivity of processing product information.
This improvement translates to a cost savings
of $20,000 per month.
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An IT consultant at BP described that he typically has several
applications open simultaneously and "flicks back and
forth." He frequently has to transpose information between
applications, often into Web pages. If the screen were smaller
than 17 inches, it would be harder to be accurate with the
mouse, he said.
The majority of those interviewed (given that many of them
use their monitors seven hours or more a day), noted that
reduced eyestrain was a major benefit of using larger monitors.
However, larger monitors are not without ergonomic drawbacks.
Several people doing graphic design work noted that glare
was more of an issue with larger screens. Another drawback
often cited by those using 20-inch or larger screens was that
the monitors take up a larger desk footprint, decreasing the
amount of workspace available and causing some users to sit
closer to the screen than recommended. Despite these drawbacks
for some, the advantages of larger screens still won out.
The business value of large-screen monitors will keep growing
as companies continue to deploy increasingly sophisticated
applications critical to their core business processes. For
users at these companies, their computer screen is their interface
to the growing amounts of information and increasingly powerful
software required to do their jobs. The companies described
above have clearly seen how the benefits of large-screen monitors
contribute to their employees' productivity and high performance.
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- Written by ICEX, Inc. (www.icex.com),
an independent research firm based in Boston that specializes in
developing and packaging knowledge for delivery to professionals
to improve their expertise and business performance.
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©1997 InfoWorld Impact Marketing
Director: Tom Grimshaw
Project Management: Bill Laberis Associates
Web Design: Bellevue
Data Communications
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