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Digital Signage: The Power of Partnerships

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Getting into digital signage can be relatively easy - if you form smart partnerships.
Article Author: 
Mike White
Publication Name: 
Sign & Digital Graphics
Publication Date: 
03/01/2010

 

For a sign shop, getting involved with digital signagei (DS) cani be a great idea, or it can be your worst nightmare—and regretfully, too often it is the later. This brief article is written from my perspective as and owner of an established audio visual systems integration company that has integrated and installed hundreds of digital signage systems.
 
The systems range from single screens in front lobbies to highly complex systems with hundreds of screens all controlled and supported from a single location. Many of these projects have involved both indoor and outdoor signage, and I have worked with several traditional sign companies along the way to complete the projects. The purpose of this article is to help you exploit the great idea while avoiding the nightmare.
 
DIGITAL SIGNAGE AS COMPETITION
I would expect that many sign shops and commercial graphics providers reading Sign & Digital Graphics magazine would view digital signage as competition rather than as an opportunity. And some who see it as opportunity may have already expanded their businesses to embrace digital signage. Of that group, I would expect that some have made it a profitable division within their company, but others, perhaps the majority, have found DS to be painfully difficult.
 
With that said, let’s examine the requirements for successful and profitable sales and installation of digital signage; and then you can determine if it is a good potential fit for your company. Remember, there are many ways that a sign shop can profit by the double-digit growth of digital signage market. One way is to form a partnership with an appropriate counterpart in the audio visual industry. In a successful partnership, each entity continues to do what they do best, with the goal of providing DS customers with complete solutions.
 
DIGITAL SIGNAGE DEFINED
In a most simplistic statement, digital signage is any electronic media, delivered any where any time. There are two categories of digital signage:
 
    * Outward Looking—Ad-based or retail digital signage driven and financially supported by the return on investment of advertising of products, services or events.
    * Inward Looking—Non ad-based, digital signage used primarily to provide important and critical information to employees, customers and patrons. DS in this case is used for wayfindingi, schedule updates, HR messaging, education, emergency notification, etc.
 
To be successful, a digital signage system needs to have the following components in place:
    * Pertinent, high-quality contenti
    * Content transport infrastructure (usually some significant networki connectivity and IT knowledge is required to work through the firewalls and security infrastructure that may be in place)
    * Hardware (computers/players/routers), display screens (plasma, LCDi, LED) all designed for the extended duty cycle of digital signage
    * Digital signage management software suited for the application (with over 200 to choose from, this is not an easy choice)
    * A skilled installation team
    * Trainers capable to teaching the client how the system works and how to use it. They should also possess project management skills
    * A sales network is required to support ongoing sales (for ad-based networks)
 
BETTER TOGETHER
Going it alone presents a great potential gain, but it also carries the greatest risk. Sometimes it’s better to tackle a jobi together. I am sure I’m not the only business owner who has experienced a financial scare associated with a business venture that appeared great from the outside, but once I got into it, discovered there was much more to it than I had anticipated—only to end up losing a lot of money and time.
 
The alternative that has worked for me is to team up with others who have skill sets and experience that I lack. The strategy is simple: find others who have proven skills or resources that you need, and create a synergistic opportunity relationship. That, of course, also sounds simple on the surface and it is a little more difficult to actually do.
 
Let me give an example. We have sold and installed several digital signage systems into gaming environments, and as a part of one of those systems, the customer wanted to install some large outdoor pedestal-based LED signs. They wanted the same system that controlled all the content on the indoor component of the system to work in coordination with and share content with the outdoor components.
 
My company has many years of experience in doing all the elements except the outdoor pedestal-based LED display. So we had a few choices:
    * Tell the customer we cannot do that (and stand a chance of losing the entire job)
    * Tell the customer that we could do the job, and try to do it on our own—with our own resources, but without the skill sets, experience and knowledge.
    * We could have hired our own team and purchased all the tools ourselves and hopefully got future jobs doing the same thing to make this investment pay off.
    * Or, we could have found the best outdoor sign company in the area, gone directly to the owner, put a mutual non-disclosure in place and negotiate a mutually beneficial relationship that allowed us to share the profit from the job. This is exactly what we did.
 
Partnering is certainly not without risk—especially if you don’t check out your sub-contracting choice—but I have found most business owners have integrity and will gladly work with you. So, to the readers of this article coming from the traditional sign business, I can state for a fact that the AV industry has an abundance of integrators who would welcome the opportunity to team with you in a mutually beneficial relationship.
 
We in the AV industry understand and embrace the concept that it is better to have a portion of a pie than no portion whatsoever. I would also reflect that we understand that there are many within the sign industry who have key relationships with the very clients who also want to engage in digital signage. We recognize that in many cases we are the newcomer, and that your proven relationships are worth a great deal.
 
GOTCHAS OF GOING IT ALONE
If you have decided it is best to do the digital signage business without teaming up and creating business relationships, then may I strongly suggest the following to avoid some of the most common Gotha’s and how to avoid them. Here are my top five:
1) Make sure that you have someone on the team who is extremely IT literate, and make sure that you are proactive with the customer’s IT department. The most common phrase you will likely hear from your customer’s IT administrator is this: “Not on my network.” If you don’t include them in the upfront planning of this digital signage networki, it will prove to be true. Your new system will not be allowed on their network.
 
2) Find a champion within your customer’s organization who, as Warren Buffett would say, is willing to have skin in the game relative to the content being provided. If the customer is invested, he will make sure that content is always fresh, high-quality oriented and pertinent.
 
3) No single digital signage software package will work for every digital signage project. Make sure you do your homework to ensure that you select the right software partner. There are more than 200 software manufactures in this industry—and many are still selling vapor ware. Remember to Test, Test and Test Again to make sure the software will do what customer needs it to do.
 
4) Measure twice and cut once. It is imperative that you develop a collection of questions that will help you clearly define a tight scope of work. Otherwise you will end up doing lots of unpaid modifications or even worse, get dismissed from the job, because the customer thought it would do something it simply would not do.
 
5) Not all hardware is capable of supporting a digital signage application. Digital signage networks often run 24/7 or at least 18 hours a day. Many manufactures will not even warranty their product for that duty cycle, and the heat generated from that duty cycle will eventually kill your hardware. Trust me, your customer will not pay for the replacement but will expect you to fully replace.
 
For more insights into the Gotchas of digital signage, please see the article “25 Gotchas” on my Web site (www.digitalsignage-usa.com/Questions/Questions.php). Quickly reading this article could save you a lot of money.
 
A BEAUTIFUL MORNING

In closing, I’ll leave you with this analogy. Digital signage appears to be like the sea on a beautiful morning. It looks like it will be fun. It looks like it is safe, and it looks like the opportunity for enjoyment is endless. However, the sea can turn very rough in a very short time, and has the potential to totally destroy every resource you have. So, it is wise to always sail the sea with an experienced captain and crew, and on a ship that is designed for the task. You can hire such a crew, and certainly you can buy such a ship—or you can seek profitable passage with a captain and crew that have sailed these waters and know their perils.

AV and Systems Integrator Resources

Company
Location
Web Address
Advanced AV
West Chester, PA
AV Innovations
Tucson, AZ
Digital Roads
Denver, CO
ET Group
Toronto Canada
Mission Electronics
Kansas City
Multi-Media Solutions
Alcoa, TN
NorCom
Cincinnatti OH
One Work Place
Boston, MA
Stage Front Presentations
Savannah, GA
Tierney Brothers
Minneapolis, MN
Video Systems of the Carolinas
Charlotte, NC

The resources named here are not necessarily endorsed by the author. For a more complete list of AV and systems integration companies involved with digital signage, visit www.digitalsignagedirectory.com.

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