Spar for the course

Cloud-based digital signage-as-a-service that has been developed in the UK is already delivering for one of the world's giant convenience store chains, finds Fleur Doidge

Convenience store chain Spar had been struggling with its new digital signage infrastructure, which was proving too complicated and expensive for it to work with. It has a distributed set-up of 170 outlets in the UK alone - and what if, down the track, the company wished to roll out to its full complement of 12,000 stores based across 34 countries?

Anthony Sappor, business development manager at Spar UK, says deploying digital signage was increasingly seen as a necessary component to the retail giant's business model. So the option was floated of bringing the content and network management in-house.

"Having made the decision, we needed a simple solution that any of us could use," Sappor says. "We also needed the ability to distribute content en masse, or on a site-by-site basis to ensure our suppliers are reaching the correct audiences in accordance with a store's product range and location."

Ticking all the boxes

According to Sappor, UK-headquartered and developed digital signage-as-a-service provider Remote Media, with its product signagelive, ticked all the boxes Spar wanted. Once installed, signagelive has allowed the retailer to manage its UK network of 170 stores.

The offering revolves around an easy-to-use platform that allows content to be tailored to different store formats and locations.

At the time of writing, Spar had bought 510 signagelive licences, with further expansion in the pipeline. The retailer has a total of about 5,000 to 6,000 outlets in the UK alone.

Jason Cremins, founder and chief executive of Remote Media (trading as signagelive), says the Spar deal stemmed from a meeting at signage tradeshow ScreenMedia Expo in London two years ago. "It all started from a walk-on to our stand. Martin, who was the IT director at Spar, was wandering around and appeared to be in a bit of a pickle, and asked whether we could help. We then went up to see him at his office in the Midlands."

According to Cremins, Spar had adopted an Avanti screen media-based network, which was satellite or broadcast based and involved more on-premise infrastructure for end users.

"The upshot was that they [Spar] ended up with a lot of redundant equipment, which Martin had been asked to ‘do something' with. Should you salvage it and do something positive with the kit, or do you just can the whole thing and forget about it?," says Cremins. "They had been limping along." Months further down the track, after that initial meeting, Spar decided to opt for the signagelive offering.

Sappor says signagelive was chosen because of its competitive price and ease of use.

"We were able to have it all sorted in a matter of weeks. The helpfulness and support of the team was definitely another deciding factor in choosing signagelive. Also, signagelive offers the possibility of easily integrating other software such as Flypaper, which was very important to us," Sappor says.

Most of Spar's stores are independently owned, but a number are owned directly by Spar's wholesalers. This means that each store can be set up to meet its local customers' needs with different layouts, as well as products and services.

Sappor explains: "An example of the need to tailor our content is the recent work we have been doing with a company called Payzone. Payzone is a service that allows people to pay bills remotely using cash - typically utility bills. This facility is available at 65 of our 170 digital signage locations and we have been able to work with Payzone in creating a series of adverts that are transmitted only to those relevant sites."

Effective digital signage can really boost sales in retail, according to Sappor. "The ad campaign we did for Britvic drink was a good example. Britvic provided us with the imagery and the details of its campaign. We assembled the ads and broadcast them in the stores. As a result of this exercise, Britvic reported a 40 per cent increase in sales," he says.

Flypaper is an app that generates Flash and video content for digital signage networks and does not need any custom programming. Photos and text provided by the various manufacturers of Spar's diverse brand portfolio is uploaded and broadcast.

"We just do an integration that backs on to signagelive, and we can drag it onto our playlist," says Cremins.

The fact that signagelive is cloud based was critical to its success with Spar, he maintains.

"The technology they [Spar] had would not run the latest and greatest, but it would do exactly what they needed. So we got a player online, and they did a technical audit of all this kit. Some of the kit needed replacing," Cremins says. "They wanted a low-cost, all-inclusive operation."

With a cloud-based digital signage system, customers need only buy the appropriate internet-enabled signage device, preloaded with the software to play back content full screen across a number of different locations. Of course they will need a suitable internet connection as well, but previously, they would have had to buy servers, install software, and configure and manage it all themselves.

Also, according to Cremins, its players do not require continuous connection to the web to operate. If the connection goes down, they will carry on working and displaying the last content received until the internet connection is re-established.

Compatible player hardware is provided by the likes of BrightSign, with which signagelive inked a deal in January. Cremins says the BrightSign range of networked devices can now be integrated with signagelive to rival the technical capabilities and stability of more expensive PC-based offerings.

Tailored improvements

The signagelive SaaS platform for digital signage provides the tools for layout creation, content uploading, scheduling, delivery, playback and reporting of digital media content over fixed and mobile internet connections. There need be no upfront customer costs, and users pay per month or per year for each connected digital media player.

The customer's digital signage network is managed by web browser and can be scaled up by adding more media players, with thousands capable of being supported. Content from head office can be combined with locally specific content, so the media displayed can be unique to each outlet if required. According to Cremins, the system takes just minutes to get up and running.

"And we wrote a USB app, which makes the installation process really easy," he adds. "There's a live activation PIN."

Cremins says the cloud-based digital signage offering is already being incorporated into reseller partners' portfolios. IT resellers that know enough about digital signage are finding more business customer deployments across a range of verticals. Cremins' company, for example, has been doing installations within the education sector as well - including in Oxford, Cambridge and Hull.

Expansion across the Spar network is "very much a slow burn", but get the digital signage offering right across such a network and the opportunities are there, he maintains.

"This is becoming big for us -- we are finding a lot of uptake in what we call ‘brownfield'. [For example] there are all these people with shedloads of Samsung MagicInfo out there [that they are not getting the best use of]," he adds.

And with the advance of cloud anti-virus and productivity suites such as Office 365, customers are more receptive than ever to web-based offerings, Cremins notes.