Signs of the times
Steve Hales looks at the many benefits of digital signage and explains why this fast-moving and fast-growing sector could be a boon to resellers
The web helps users source information and connect with others. It created new markets and challenged established industries, creating lists of new winners and losers. Digital signage technology offers potentially a parallel transformation, creating opportunities for resellers that understand it and its technology.
In the past, digital signage was limited to transport and high-profile advertising implementations. Now you can see it in retailers, estate agents, banks, doctors’ surgeries, schools and other organisations, and it is not always about advertising.
Resellers are ideally placed to play to a mixture of high-demand and niche preferences for digital signage. Given a choice, all digital signage network owners want to display more compelling content for less work. Media network owners want to control large numbers of screens across different locations; advertisers want playback reporting; estate agents want to automatically connect to property management databases; healthcare providers want to connect to patient databases; and businesses want to connect to enterprise data.
So the digital signage opportunity is more than offering to connect a screen to the wall and plug in all the equipment. Successful resellers will aim to fulfil unmet needs in different market niches. Creativity, expertise and market-specific experience, alongside IT skills such as web development, systems integration, network administration and database support, will help seal the deal. Digital signage also means you can generate an ongoing revenue stream.
In this fast-growing market, many digital signage vendors choose to work with the channel.
Resellers choosing a vendor must consider product performance, ease of support, vendor reputation, margin and the ability to generate ongoing revenue. I also believe you should consider the vendor’s agility within the market and how easy the product is to customise for specific needs.
Some platforms allow digital signage to be linked to business applications, automatically displaying content from business services or databases. Key performance indicator (KPI) data can be integrated, for example, with corporate and site-specific news drawn from various sources, such as SharePoint.
Well connected
Resellers may help their customers by linking digital signage systems with internet services to display interactive and dynamic content that suits specific customer requirements. Possibilities might include news, weather and travel, or a feed from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Flickr.
VARs may also help users connect to applications such as Salesforce, Zoho, Google Analytics or Confluence. There will undoubtedly be many more such opportunities.
They may also choose to customise user interfaces in ways that simplify workflows and enhance efficiencies for their customers. For example, digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising network owner VetChannel integrated our product with its own media channel, enabling customers to choose the content and playlists they want to show.
For advertising companies, modern digital signage technology not only makes it easier to show dynamic and hard-hitting content, it also improves management with playback reporting and audience measurement facilities.
I have said that digital signage is a fast-growing and fast-moving sector. However, how many resellers have realised that advances in mobile hardware - such as e-readers, tablets and smartphones - provide another avenues into the digital signage experience, especially when you start to talk about cloud.
Steve Hales is head of sales and marketing at Camvine