8. Double your displays

Sometimes, adding inexpensive hardware can give your bottom line a boost. In May, insurance firm The Durkin Agency moved 20 of its claims adjustors, data entry clerks, and IT employees to a dual-monitor setup using 19-inch flat panel displays. The result? A 10 percent increase in the number of insurance claims the firm processed each day, along with increased employee satisfaction, says vice president Eileen Durkin.

Multiple monitor configurations are gaining in popularity, says Derek Timm, national technical services manager for WorkRite, which sells the articulating arms Durkin uses in its dual-display workstations.

"For a minimal cost, the productivity gains you can get from a dual monitor are quite phenomenal," Timm says. "You don't have to minimize windows as much, or page back and forth between applications." Putting the displays on adjustable mounts creates more desk space and allows users to adjust their workstations for comfort.

9. Give your WAN a boost

If your company has branch offices, odds are you've got wide-area network problems. As traffic slows down due to latency and other issues, so does your ability to collaborate with far-flung colleagues. The solution may be a WAN-acceleration appliance.

Appliances such as Blue Coat Systems' SG800, Riverbed Technologies' Steelhead 3010, and Silver Peak's NX-3500 can cache frequently transferred files and optimize TCP, MAPI, HTTP, and other Net protocols to make offices halfway around the world feel as if they're right next door. Prices start around US$7,500 per appliance but head north in a hurry.

The key is choosing the right appliance for your enterprise, as different accelerators have different strengths. The Steelhead, for example, can optimize Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange traffic; Blue Coat's solution is the only one of the three that can handle encrypted traffic using SSL; and Silver Peak's appliance can beef up UDP (User Datagram Protocol) traffic, which can provide a boost for real-time voice and video transmissions. For more information on WAN acceleration, see Keith Schultz's " Wide-Area Slowdown ."