It’s no secret that digital signageⁱ is considered complicated and scary—especially to the uninitiated. It’s also no secret that it’s common for vendors in the digital signage space to claim that digital signage is easy and that you should buy it. And while all of that is true, there is one category of digital signage—all-in-one systems—that is comparatively simple and an easier starting place. We’re going to define all-in-one solutions, discuss why you’re being deceived and what it is that makes clients actually want to buy digital signage.

 

 

 

ALL-IN-ONE DEFINED

Some consider all-in-one digital signage as a screenⁱ and a player all mounted in a single cabinet. This formatⁱ allows you to purchase the entire unit as a single turnkey product. The solution is a good idea for those who need to have the digital signs be a part of the environment to maintain a particular look or feel. A good example of this is a hotel that has a classic all-wood look. An all-in-one solution for this would be ideal, but would most likely require a custom build to satisfy the clients' esthetic needs. Another form of all-in-one digital signage is a screen with a built-in player. This is helpful when you need to hang a screen but don’t want a big player hanging off the back.

 

All-in-one digital signage canⁱ also include a solutions model. Instead of a vendor providing just a player PC, or selling player-software, they offer an all-in-one solution that includes a physical player system, contentⁱ creation software and content managementⁱ software in an easy-to-use, easy-to-setup package.

 

This method is different from the others. In contrastⁱ to a purely physical method, it encompasses the entire project, from content, content management, networkⁱ management, player hardware, and supporting services that would complete all of the different parts of a digital signage installation as mentioned above including tech support for you, the installer. This is the all-in-one solution that is becoming the simplest option.

 

Note: Even if you decide to go with an all-in-one solution you’re not out of the woods yet. You still have to deal with the vendors, and what they want you to buy.

YOU’RE BEING DECEIVED

You have a business to run. When companies that make digital signage tell us that we need Flash content, video content, and animations, we tend to get a headache just thinking about it. Who will create the content? Who will manage it? Who will learn to use it? Those are questions that have been keeping us awake at night and may be turning our clients off to it as well. We need to keep things simple. You may say, “Well, I was told that I need all of these things to have the digital signage be effective.” If that’s the case, you’ve been deceived!

 

We found that all of our clients weren’t using the video content that they started with and ended up using still images. I had an interesting conversation with one of our clients at a museum sometime ago. The gentleman that I spoke to was able to vocalize what the rest of our clients have been telling us with their content practices.

 

The museum purchased a high-end digital signage solution from us to communicate messages to their visitors. Our client mentioned that the network is working great even though we knew that they weren’t using flash video, animations or movement of any kind. This is contrary to everything that is considered “normal” in the digital signage industry.

 

Referring to his digital signage, he said, “It is one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made.” Of course I needed the answer to my next question—How do you know?

 

“I just know,” he responded. “For instance, we will announce a tour for a particular area and at a particular time. This announcement is only displayed on the digital signs, not on our program or the posterⁱ boards. Sure enough; when it’s time for the tour, there is a long line of visitors waiting to go.”

 

This was interesting to me, so I pried a bit more and asked him how it’s been working in their food court space.

 

“No science experiment was performed, but I do know that when we feature cheeseburgers, we sell a lot more cheeseburgers.”

 

Generally, if there are no numbers attached to a reaction or result, it’s not credible. So how can we add some credibility to this idea? It was obvious to me right away. He was excited about results that didn’t really make the museum any money. The profits made on the sales boost of cheeseburgers is made by their food provider, not the museum, and the tours are the “valueⁱ-added” portion of the museum.

 

After hearing this I started to catch my own client’s excitement. I have seen this particular museum’s network on multiple occasions and noticed that the screens are basically showing stills. They are sharp, clean, and good-looking, but there is no real movement on the screens. Again, this is contrary to everything that we’ve been told in the past from this industry—movement on the digital signage display has been the norm. I remember it like it was yesterday, “Movement is the best thing for better results”. This relates to crawls, video, animation, etc… So I alluded to the fact that adding movement is what should be done to make things even better (by the way, this is before we decided that this was a bad idea.)

 

“We tried that,” he said. “We added video and moving text to ‘enhance the visitor’s experience’ and it all went to hell.” What is he saying? I mean, video, animations, and moving text are the Holy Grail of digital signage!

 

Sure enough, once our client added moving text, animations and videos, the lines of visitors waiting for the tours dwindled to nothing. No more cheeseburger sales boost—no more value to their digital signage networkⁱ.

 

What conclusion should we come to? The fear that resides in all of us about the complexities of digital signage doesn’t need to be there. We don’t all need the difficult things such as videos, flash animations, crawls, etc. Liberating concept, isn’t it? What we do need is quality. This article just touches the surface of all of the discrepancies within the digital signage industry. For more information, go to http://www.noventri.com/eco/OffWhitePaper.php

 

WHAT CLIENTS ACTUALLY WANT

There are 11 items on your client’s wish list when they are considering investing into a digital signage system.

 

1) Low initial cost and low installation cost. You shouldn't have to pay a lot for something that didn't cost you much in the past in the form of paper signage and you shouldn't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out how to install your digital signage either.

 

2) Fewer points of failure, such as video extenders, computer systems, etc. Lower overall complexity of the system is required. Again, you're replacing paper signs. You should be able to make the message look the way you want, "print" it with the same steps you're used to and "hang" the sign with much less effort than before.

 

3) Low maintenance costs, if any. No computers to reboot or update at every screen. No viruses to worry about. The only maintenance needed for your paper signs was to hang a new one once the message was out of date.

 

4) Ease-of-use. Really! Your currentⁱ staff should be able to use and manage your digital signage installation. Did you ever have a hard time dealing with the ins and outs of paper signage?

 

5) Enterprise level features like automated management and scheduling. A digital signage system should update key information automatically. Anything that's stored in a databaseⁱ should be automatically displayed, without human intervention.

 

6) Easily networkable. Digital signage shouldn't need it's own network, but should be able to operate on an existing network without disruption or a heavy load on resources.

 

7) Low power consumption, green. How much power did your paper sign use? This means there should be no cooling necessary. If you've read articles on how to make a digital signage deployment green, for real, you should have a digital signage solution that would promote that.

 

8) Extended up time. The digital signage must work 24/7 reliably! The paper sign never turned off did it?

 

9) Small size. Players must be small enough to hide behind the smallest monitor or even inside of one, or even in the wall! You shouldn't need that rack or cabinet anymore to hide all the PCs.

 

10) Instantaneous delivery of emergency information such as fire alarm and escape instructions. This is a must, and you shouldn't have to wait minutes to have this on the screens. It should be available instantaneously when somebody pulls the fire alarm, or triggers any other emergency eventⁱ!

 

11) The finest quality picture. A digital signage player that's capable of native resolutions and aspect ratios of the screens you're using, as well as utilizing the best available connection should be expected.

 

CONCLUSION