You can take a look at it here:  www.visualize.me/dhartensveld

Xerox established its Palo Alto Research Center (better known as Xerox PARC) in June 1970 as a West Coast extension of its research and development laboratories. PARC researchers proved wildly successful in pioneering many contemporary business technologies—the PC (the first was called the “Alto”), graphical user interface (GUI), Ethernet local area computer network (LAN) and laser printing, to name just a few. Xerox, however, was considerably less successful (and less interested) in commercializing much of PARC’s technology itself, leaving the door open for Apple, IBM, Microsoft and others to capitalize on PARC’s innovations.

This is a good reminder for me that being right is not enough.  These folks were ahead of the curve by a long shot and, they were on target about how and what technologies would develop and become useful.  (Image for a moment having email a regular part of your day in 1970).  The thing is that a lot of areas had to catch up before they could capitalize on it.

About 10 years ago, I remember speaking to a vertical market analyst who told me that most of the time, companies when pursuing vertical markets over-estimate short term results and under-estimate long term results.  That rings true here as well.  Having a clear vision of what the future holds may mean that you have to keep pressing for a very long time before you will really see the fruits of your labor pay off.  Just because you are not seeing the results over night, it doesn’t mean your vision is wrong.

About 14 years ago, I got involved with automating medical claims. For those not familiar with the process, as it turns out doctors still lick stamps and send paper medical bills (or claims) to health insurance companies for payment. Sure they can submit electronic bills as EDI, but many don’t. There are a couple big reasons (and a million small ones) that lots of paper claims are still out there:

– Loose Standards (837 the EDI format is implemented in lots of different ways)

- Addressing / Delivery (imagine a doctor needing a separate phone line for every payer – while it is not quite this bad, it certainly isn’t like dropping an envelope in a mailbox (or sending an email for that matter) and knowing it will get to an address despite the fact that you have never talked to them)

So while the above could be overcome, it is easier in lots of cases to just keep doing what you are doing. When it comes down to it, there is a utility to paper that is hard to beat in the short term. This is a common theme to PaperInbox, but in this case I want to discuss how it applies to Medical Records.

Whether it is industry news or even mainstream news covering the new healthcare bill, people talk a lot about the EMR or Electronic Medical Records. EMRs are slated to give us all kinds of great efficiencies from better care due from access to patient history at point of care to huge administrative savings that come from eliminating clerical work. These are pretty great things and somewhat inevitable in the long term. In the short term, I think something quite different will take place.

If you had told me 14 years ago that we would still be processing paper medical claims, I would laugh at you. I would think it would be largely gone in 5-6 let alone more than double that. I was clearly dead wrong. Now couple the massive investments in EMRs and practice management systems with the requirements baked into the healthcare legislation and the EMR is looking like a winner. I’ll take the opportunity to quote my favorite college professor from University of Maryland Dr. Nichols here: “Almost everybody, almost all the time, is almost always wrong.”

Let me take this opportunity to introduce you to the PMR. You see, in the past you had the MR (or medical record) and then the EMR. Something interesting is happening with the facilities and networks that have adopted the EMR. Let’s say that someone needs their medical records because they are applying for life insurance or maybe because they are going to see a new doctor or a specialist. The facility goes to their EMR system (so far so good. . .) and (wait for it . . .) prints out your medical record!

Turns out pretty much every EMR out there uses different standards. While there is some encouraging open source stuff happening, it looks like we are going to fall into a predictable pattern here: overestimating short term gains while underestimating long term gains.

It is not like I love paper – heck I make a living killing it off – but there is a utility to paper that is undeniable. Anyone can use it without training. It is cheap to integrate with when we consider at least on a single user basis and doesn’t require any up front investment. The PMR or Paper Medical Record is going to go away kicking and screaming. In the meantime, it is open season on PMRs and there is no bag limit.

In my last post, I submitted that today’s outsourcing is not all that different from basic economic specialization.  We can see that due to advances in technology – particularly communications – the pool of places, talent and resources to draw from is now essentially global and nearing limitless.  Often times my customers ask me questions and I have to point out that the question they have asked is not a matter of “can” something be done, but instead “should” it.  That is where these options with outsourcing have left us.

So what areas should a successful corporation focus on?  Obviously those that offer the biggest return in cost savings.  Now those who have done business with me over the years know me to be perhaps obsessive when it comes to focusing on hard dollar ROI and having very little tolerance for the soft dollar pay-backs that are often used to justify technology sales.  That being said, one has to consider all the COSTS including harder to estimate impacts on other areas of the organization.  

For a great example, I will steal from a very smart fellow I met a few years ago named Brian Sullivan.  Brian runs a company called the “Auto Insurance Report” and speaks to executives about all manner of things.  If you think about the typical auto-insurance customer, they really don’t have a lot of interaction with the company.  Most interactions are either initial sign-up with the company or when they need to file a claim.  At the end of the day, my driving record (stellar BTW thanks) is what it is.  I drive the vehicle I drive and live where I live.  When all the actuarial tables are crunched, my risk is what it is and doesn’t change when I look at one company or another.  To simplify things (since this is not about insurance) lets call Risk=Cost in this conversation.  While I might see small changes from one insurance company to the next when getting quotes, they all should fall within a narrow range.

If some company charges more for the same coverage, then I either don’t understand all the extra value I will be getting, their administrative costs are way higher, or they are trying to soak me.  In the second two cases, that company will have to adjust to the market or not be around too long.  In the first case, their marketing is not doing a good enough job of communicating just how much better their service is.  If they deliver coffee and donuts to me every day that my car is in the shop, but I don’t know they do that, then their marketing is failing (assuming I care about coffee and donuts).  Now apply this to perceptions of the companies in the normal distribution of quotes.  If I perceive them as being easier to sign up / do business with / that I will get great service if there is ever a problem, then I will go with that company (again as long as prices are similar).  As such you might think I am saying “Never Outsource Marketing”.  In this example I am but lets go on to the next part of the example to flesh it out.

The other time that the customer contacts the company is to file a claim.  This situation in the best of cases is a stressful event to begin with if it is a fender bender and downright terrifying if someone is injured.  Pretty much, the customer is at least highly agitated from the first minute they get on the phone.  Some are looking for reasons to vent anger and can decide to go crazy as soon as they hear a slightly different (READ: Foreign) accent on the phone.  Putting someone in a faraway place, who very well may go through an extensive training program on how to handle these things is a recipe for disaster.  The worst can come out as soon as the flow-chart the outsourced staff is allowed to follow is slightly diverted from in any way.  They are in a situation where they can only say no and things can go south very quickly from there.  Sure, they lose the customer.  Worse though is that people can be bitter and let me tell you that this person will tell his “horror” story every time the subject of insurance comes up for the rest of his life.  Word of mouth is the most powerful force in marketing and can undo countless dollars spent on clever commercials.  Does the happy customer pipe up when insurance comes up?  Not likely and even if they do, it is a one liner like “I have MONDOInsurance and they are ok.” Hardly a balancing factor.

These examples bring me to the first thing that companies should never outsource:

1. Never Outsource Your Closest Contact To Your Customer

Consumers are starting to sniff out the “virtual” companies that are out there.  While I will go into more detail on what SHOULD be outsourced in the next post, I will say that if you outsource all the aspects of your organization to different vendors, it removes the feedback loop where your customers chart your course by telling you what they want and what they don’t.  At least equally bad, it has the potential to devalue your company to investors since barriers to entry are very low and your next competitor is right around the corner.

In the cases above, the only time the company has to really connect with the customer were marketing and the claims process.  Sure they can send things in the mail and all sorts of other opportunities, but the only place they actually matter is if you get these right.  Marketing – is core to being an insurance company in this case.  While outsourcing large parts of this function can give you short term gains, there is really nothing stopping your competition from doing the same.  In auto-insurance, you need to hire and retain the best people at understanding and communicating your story.

2. Never Outsource Decision Making

As it turns out, I am never wrong.  Ignoring the obvious jokes about asking my wife her opinion on this matter, I say this with some caveats.  I credit my success in business and my life in general to my critical thinking skills.  When I have solid information in front of me that I took the time to collect and weigh, my conclusions are near flawless.  One of the other skills that I have that ends up being very handy is that I am great at being wrong.  Being wrong to me is a wonderful opportunity to learn and I enjoy it when it happens.  Now before you close this post in frustration or I lose all my credibility with you, I will explain.

When I said I am never wrong, I am actually referring to my logic and decision making skills.  As it turns out when I am wrong, it is often a problem with the premises that I based my judgment on.  This happens a lot when I am impatient when it comes to collecting the data to make a good choice.  I find the best employees who tend to be the hardest to replace and most valuable overall share this trait in some way.  Find these people, retain them and give them the tools, information and time to make great choices.  Not to beat on the dead horse, but outsourcing decision making is one of the reasons that so many large lenders got in trouble in recent years.  The underwriting function was in many ways commoditized  and put multiple layers between the underwriter and the actual investor (person whose money is being lent).  Because everyone else was doing it, is not a great reason to outsource decision making.  Missing out on completely or at the very least muffling crucial feedback loops is a disaster in waiting no matter what industry.

If you have read this far, you might be thinking I am saying to never outsource anything.  While there are lots of areas you should not outsource lets not get out of control here.  It is not like every insurance company should own TV stations or print magazines etc.  Where do you draw the line between something to keep in house vs. something to allow to be done outside whether it is in insurance or any other industry?

Next Post: What Should Be Outsourced

PART 1: Background

For years now, companies in corporate America have been turning to outsourcing to help improve margins and make their organizations more competitive.  The thing is that the successful stories – the ones that truly deliver on the promise – are the ones we hear the least about.  Conversely, the biggest disasters are told many times becoming modern versions of the warnings to mariners of sea monsters or the edge of the earth over time.

Why hide it?

Well as it turns out, large companies in America have lots of competition looking to tighten the belt just as much as they are.  When a company outsources successfully a particular part of the operation, the only people they would want to tell about it might be shareholders or potential shareholders.  Then again, if it is successful enough, the better numbers should speak for themselves better than any details of their process ever could.  As such they would be only giving their competition a roadmap to re-level the playing field.  In addition, outsourcing can have negative connotations with some customers regardless of the positive overall effect on the product or service they are purchasing.  Better to keep the best stuff under a hat overall in most cases.

As it turns out, there are huge amounts of information available on successful cases of outsourcing things as varied as IT Services, Call Center work, Tech Support, Data Entry, Manufacturing or any number of others.  The problem is that this information is usually generated courtesy of the company providing the outsourcing services.  Predictably they are going to give “case studies” that proffer stories that might as well include cutlery jumping over celestial bodies (ibid Neal Stephenson).

So how is the busy COO or President to know what is best to pursue and what things should be avoided?  My approach to almost all problems in life is to reduce them to their primary and build back up from there.  I’ll try to be brief since most readers understand the background, but the point needs to be made.  Outsourcing is a modern way of expressing a very old concept: economic specialization.  Without economic specialization, the modern world could not exist.  If each of us had to grow our own food, build our own shelter, weave our own clothes, provide our own healthcare, etc. we would have little time left to concentrate on designing efficient engines, packing more transistors on a wafer of silicone or making a beautiful sculpture.  Today’s modern communication and transportation have simply allowed us to take advantage of varied conditions in further away places.  The answer to WHY outsource lies in the very same roots as any economic specialization.

NEXT POST: The 2 Areas Not to Outsource

Bigger might just mean more expensive

There are reasons I enjoy my work in a technology related field.  One of the most fun is the whole idea of better, faster, cheaper that I get to see new examples of every day.  If you think back a bit, in 1980 if you bought a VCR it was about $500 (in 1980 dollars), the size of a refrigerator, had no remote, no auto-tracking, no stereo audio output and broke if you rewound tapes too much.  Just before they stopped selling VCRs a couple years ago, you could go into a Walmart and buy one with a remote, produced a clear picture automatically, stereo output, was only maybe 4 times larger than the tapes themselves and cost $39 in 2006 dollars!  It was better in every imaginable way and way cheaper to boot.

To me, this is how I have come to expect technology to behave.  I have been working in document imaging for roughly the last 15 years.  Document scanners followed the predictable pattern.  15 years ago a bi-tonal scanner that jammed all the time and made marginally clear images was roughly $30,000.  Now you can buy a great full color scanner that has a super reliable paper feeder that can handle roughly 100 pages per minute for $5,000.

One would think that the rest of the imaging industry followed suit.  While there are some examples of this, for the most part the price of a document management system remains high without offering a comparable additional hard dollar payback over systems that were running 15 years ago.  Let me simplify the conversation; many companies have fairly unsophisticated needs when it comes to document management:

• Put a variety of documents in to the system (scanned images, faxes, PDFs, word docs etc.)
• Assign indexes to the documents (Document type, date, reference number, etc.)
• Be able to easily find them and use them when you need them
• Keep things secure
• Make sure the archive is backed up so a hardware failure doesn’t cripple your organization

When it comes to most organization’s needs, being able to store their purchase orders and invoices (or HR documents or insurance claims or whatever it is the company does) so that they can easily access them when needed offers a lot of payback.  The funny thing is that prices seem to get higher every year instead of getting lower.  Sure the list of features keeps expanding, but many of these features don’t offer as much of a hard dollar payback as the basic capabilities of a document imaging system.

While I have not met a lot of happy Filenet customers over the years, there are lots of very happy customers out there with offerings like Application Xtender from EMC (the former OTG) or even Alchemy et all.  The thing is, should the paperless office require a $50,000 – $100,000 investment to start?  Sure the basic license costs less, but once you factor in training, install, maintenance, hardware, not to mention your own staff to run it, those estimates are a joke.

With this in mind, it was great to run across Fileworks Online.  The system evolved from the technology they sold for years to large insurance customers and as such is stable and full of the features one would expect to find in a modern document management system.  The thing that made it stand out to me is the faster, better, cheaper offer they put together.  Essentially instead of investing in national sales forces and trade show booths, Fileworks seems to have put together a great product that can be used by anyone with a web browser without major investments in hardware and training.  The best part is that it starts at about $30.00 per month per user with no capital investment.  They host the software and all your documents in a secure archive, keep the system running 24/7, and keep your files backed up so that you don’t have to worry about some crash will eat all your records.

(Ok, I just re-read that section. . . sounds like a campy infomercial.  Either way, I like the stuff and don’t think I should beat around the bush and pretend I don’t)

I also like how it is sold.  Rather than sitting through powerpoints on what the software will be like, Fileworks seems to figure that their best sales person is the product itself.  They encourage the potential customer to download it and give it a shot.  Most others in this space seem to think their environment would be too complicated to do this sort of thing on your own.  They are probably right.

Anyone else have any examples in imaging that follow this trend?  Drop them in the comments so I can check them out.

Now picture 7.3 million of these

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an interesting headline: Massive Effort To Save Mortgages.  The article went into how JP Morgan was planning on targeting 400,000 loans for modification of terms on top of what they were already doing.  It also mentioned some other banks such as Bank of America’s efforts to modify the terms of existing loans in lieu of foreclosure.  The article points out that “…7.3 million American Homeowners are expected to default on their mortgages between 2008 and 2010.”

As you might expect, when banks transact business with other banks, things can be done in a largely electronic environment generating minimal amounts of paper.  Since individual homeowners don’t have systems that hook directly into lenders the process of modifying the terms (mod) of a loan is done almost exclusively on paper.  Things like pay stubs, tax returns, letters of hardship are used to determine what can be done for each loan.  This means that even simple mods may carry 20-40 pages of faxes, mail, etc. inbound to the lender.  Multiply that by say 7 million and you have yourself a mess of paper.

So many times I see companies in Corporate America spending money on technology for the sake of technology instead of a solid Return on Investment like cutting costs.  In this case however, I came across a service that is specifically targeted to handle all the paperwork related to the workout options for these loans.  I put a copy of the PDF for the service on my website if anyone is interested in an overview (full disclosure: I have worked on various projects with this company for over ten years and am not a totally disinterested party).  It is exciting to see how technology can be used to effectively address something that is urgent, timely and expensive without being overcomplicated.

The service is particularly appealing to lenders because they really don’t have large capital expenditure budgets floating around right now.  Instead of a long drawn out implementation and large amounts of money down, they “pay by the drink” if you will.  It gives lenders who are under pressure to mod loans an option other than throwing more bodies at the problem and hope they can keep ahead of the tide.  Essentially it is a way for them to focus on the decision making aspect of the process rather than the menial, clerical and repetitive tasks.

This is technology and efficiency at its best and it is great when it happens.  Do you have any positive / timely technology examples?  Put it in the comments and I will do my best to address it.

In Part 1 on this subject, I discussed why John McCain is on his “Farewell Tour” of the US rather than out campaigning: he doesn’t clearly stand for ANYTHING. If you have come this far, then maybe you are asking yourself what can be done less than two weeks from the election.

I asked myself that same thing, but before I go into the answer, I will give some background. You see, I am a man without a party. Hanging on the wall in my office is a picture of Ronald Reagan. In my wallet is an ACLU card showing that I have been a member since 2001. In the back of my trusted Moleskin notebook is a copy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence which I carry with me to every meeting I have. This combination of items is a shock to most people the first time they hear it and confuses some. As I see it, my political views are very simple: I want the government out of my wallet and out of my bedroom. Unfortunately, the Democrats and Republicans don’t match up with EITHER of those things much less both.

Trust the government to decide non-objective law

The Republican Party was allegedly the party that stood for controlling and shrinking the government. Eight years of spending like drunken sailors shreds any notion of that being true. The Democrats on the other hand have had plenty of opportunities to stand up against things like illegal warrantless wiretaps or a railroaded “Patriot” Act and have stood idly by while pretending the Fourth Amendment didn’t exist; so much for the Liberals defending rights.

So since the Democrats or the Republicans don’t have a scrap of similarity to what I hold as values, I will look elsewhere. I am an Objectivist and cannot say that I am a Libertarian, however if I take a look at the Libertarian platform and plans, they dovetail nicely with my convictions regardless of how they got there. The plan can be summed up as “Smaller Government, Lower Taxes, More Freedom”. It hits me like a breath of fresh air.

The argument that I hear a lot on this subject is that people are afraid of wasting their vote on a third party. In 2000 I voted for Bush and ended up staying up for two days without sleeping glued to the TV trying to find out who won. When it was decided, I felt like I was going to vomit. You see, no matter who I voted for we were in for an awful Presidency. I call it the election hangover. In 2004, I listened to Kerry’s promises of endless handouts and spending and then choose John Edwards as his running mate. I knew Edwards as not only a frightening social engineer but an awful human being. It was clear there was no way I could vote for them. Instead I voted for a fellow named Michael Badnarik whose views very closely matched my own. The next morning, I knew that I had stood up for what I believed in rather than accepting my two awful choices. No election hangover. Most people are willing to accept values that are not their own in a candidate with the justification that it was the best of two evils. I am finished with that. I will vote for what I believe in and not give a tacit endorsement to this system that guarantees that you will only be able to choose between two bads handpicked by the lowest common denominator in the country.

The good news is that your option isn’t anything that requires you to accept my position on voting. Instead, I am telling you not to waste your vote. Before you think that is a contradiction, recognize that there is not one reasonable poll suggesting that McCain has a chance to win. A vote for him does not tell the Republican Party anything about why they lost or what they should do in the future. It is wasted plain and simple.

On the other hand, a vote for Bob Barr sends a consistent message: the party has lost its way, but the path is well marked for how to get back on it. If a principled person wants to have his or her voice heard in both political parties, they should vote for Bob Barr. A vote for Barr will be counted as a protest against the Bush/McCain’s (or even Obama’s) big spending policies.

I mentioned in the first half on this subject that both McCain (+$92B) and Obama (+$292B) are planning on massive expansions in spending. Bob Barr’s plan calls for a $200 Billion CUT in spending from present levels. His answers on individual rights and property rights are very clear – keep the government out. Tell your party what direction to go rather than stumble around for the next four year to end up with another patsy.

Part 1

In a few weeks, the election will be over and the Republican Party will ask itself where it went so wrong that caused them to be beaten so badly. McCain is a war hero, loads of experience and fairly clean for a politician. What is not to like? I can save some time and clear things up for them. McCain failed to clearly stand for anything.

Maybe We Should Subsidize Fertilizer

Obama seems to be a good man overall. He is compelling, dynamic and strikes me as someone who believes in what he is saying. The problem is not whether he is a nice man though. At issue is whether he will do a good job with the country. His prescription for how to best fix things: follow one of largest expansions of government spending in the history of the country with an even larger one. If you think that is a good thing or that productive people have a responsibility to work for those who are not productive you can stop reading here.

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. Benjamin Franklin July 4th, 1776

In any interview with McCain and in any opportunity to spell out his plans, the answer to any question that comes up invariably involves spending more money. According to the National Taxpayers Union John McCain will increase annual federal spending by $92 billion and Barack Obama will add $293 billion. If the race is to be decided by whoever promises the most to the public, McCain is getting beaten badly. At the same time, it is very difficult to put on a serious face about being fiscally conservative when you are saying that you want to increase the budget deficit by 20% your first year in office.

The question is, if McCain is not trying to buy the vote with his fancy promises of fairytale government healthcare (still socialized healthcare, but not AS socialized as Obama’s doesn’t sound that nice), increased privatization of foolish real estate speculating or a myriad of other attempts to take from those who are productive and give to those who are not, then what IS he trying to appeal to voters on?

The answer to why McCain got slaughtered in this election is not that he is old, boring, choose a running mate that talks to her invisible friends or even that he is following an awful president from his own party. The answer is that he does not stand for ANYTHING. There may have been a time when John McCain spoke his peace and stood up for what he thought was right even if it was against the advice of his political handlers. That time is long gone.

McCain’s platform is now a mush of compromises intended to appeal to the most people possible. The result is a plan where any underlying guiding principles or philosophy that he may have once possessed has been obliterated. Trying to appeal to the “average” American who shoves fast food in their face by day and rots their brain at night with American Idol and the like on TV is not the answer to fixing what is wrong with this country. These people will continue to fester and decay and their vote is not what is going to chart a successful course for the country (although it may lead to government subsidized McDonalds in 2012 paid for with more debt and the sweat of the few remaining productive people of this country).

The Republicans have missed an opportunity to define themselves for future generations. Instead of being a party that stood for letting honest men earn and keep the product of their efforts, they grasp onto scaled down versions of the same social engineering experiments the Democrats are proposing. It is as if they are conceding things like “Capitalism doesn’t work”/ “The Free Market Failed” etc. but don’t want to address it as aggressively as the Democrats. Instead of defending the principles that built the country, the Republican’s have given tacit endorsement to having the role of the government be that of a Nanny.

Rather than debate whether the government should be growing at all, the only permissible conversation is how MUCH the government should grow. When you don’t stand for the free market (healthcare, banking etc.), when you don’t stand for personal responsibility (socialize losses from foolish real estate investments), when you don’t stand up for free speech (warrant less wiretaps) and you have no plans to reduce our foreign presence (permanent troops in over 130 countries), what DO you stand for?

Up next: What can we do about it BEFORE the election?

When I took the test as a Certified Document Imaging Architech (CDIA) over ten years ago, there were a lot of questions and calculations involved with figuring out things like pixel pitch on displays. It was very important to invest in expensive monitors so that scanned images could be accurately displayed for the user. Today’s modern LCD wide screen monitors offer unparalleled clarity when working with scanned images alongside a line of business application. Many organizations are investing in dual monitor or large LCD monitors for their employees in these environments. When brightness and contrast are set properly, the worker not only has access to all the information they need on one screen, their eyes do not fatigue as quickly as more expensive monitors from just a few years ago. This makes for a productive environment and worker. Often though, one user preference is overlooked.

At native resolutions, pixels on the screen are very sharp and clear. Typical native widescreen resolutions for 19-21inch wide screen monitors are between 1440×900 and 1650×1080. At default settings however, many users find text to be too small on screen to comfortably work with. Most users at that point adjust the screen resolutions down to something closer to 1280×960 or less to make the text appear larger. While the text will appear larger, the user will pay a heavy price in loss of clarity and sharpness. This is because LCD monitors do not interpolate down well like CRT monitors can. Instead of deploying monitors and allowing the users to adjust these settings, adjust the text size settings in the Windows interface. This can be found Control Panel, Display Properties, Appearance, Font Size. Use of the Advanced tab will also allow you to make fine tune adjustments to make the user environment most productive. Turning on effects like Clear Type makes a big difference as well.

While these settings are obvious to the typical IT staff or power user, the typical claims examiner, underwriter or other line of business person won’t likely understand what the screen should / can look like. This can make the investment in these very capable displays not pay back the benefits hoped for. Clarity of text pays back wonderful dividends for a relatively small investment.

Finally, I have also found dramatic improvement from use of a DVI Video Card when connected to a DVI monitor (as opposed to standard D-Sub). That investment choice can sometimes break a budget or may have already been made. The gains vary based on the specific models chosen, a little research into monitors with similar specs should pay off nicely.