Though some say 30-inch monitors are actually more useful for examining documents side by side than two 15-inch monitors, providing dual monitors is often described as a way companies show they’re willing to provide employees with high-end tools. Said E.J. Kite, chief information officer of Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, “Whether dual monitors are ever mission critical really comes down to the desktop, what tasks you’re doing.” For secondary marketing and various other functions, he said dual monitors have proven to be essential mortgage industry tools.
“We have used dual monitors operationally for the past ten years to implement a paperless work environment in underwriting, with document imaging on one monitor and the LOS on the other,” said Charles Kirkpatrick, EVP and CIO of Flagstar Bank. “We tied the two together with workflow. It was the only way we could get rid of the paper.”
Flagstar’s decision to deploy dual monitors did not hinge on a cost analysis, he said. “I needed two screens and couldn’t do it all on one screen. Clearly we would not have been able to meet any of our service levels anywhere without dual monitors.”
Though Flagstar originally started with 15-inch monitors, he said, they currently use dual 20- and 22-inch monitors because a 15-inch monitor is not large enough “to view multiple document images and access the LOS,” while one 40- or 44-inch monitor “is not economical.”
Kirkpatrick said multiple monitors are very efficient for call centers and interactions between loan officers and borrowers. “Sometimes we use triple or quadruple monitors.”
“Get a good quality HD monitor,” advised Wingspan’s Kite. And it doesn’t make sense to have only one.” To minimize the amount of desk space needed for dual monitors, Fannie Mae had dual monitors “attached to the wall on a swivel,” said Kite, who spent three years as Fannie Mae’s MIS director. He said the benefit there was the ability to make the in-house workforce as mobile as possible, allowing them to move from one workspace to another as tasks require. Kite said fostering that kind of mobility was a lesson he took with him to Wingspan.
