Digital Signage Today
00:13:03 · Darryl Kuder, Judy Monnel
[00:13:03] S1: Yeah. I mean, from our perspective, because we do use BrightSign on most of our projects, we do, for the most part, have sort of a minimum level of BrightSign player that we like to spec in. Is their mid level player, their XD player. Usually, anything that and above can be handled by most CMSs on the market. They actually do make a really good player, and because of that, it kinda hits a price point that's what I would consider a fair price point. Right. You know, end users not overpaying for something they'll never use as far as performance goes. But at the same time, we're not putting in something that is so entry level that at the end of the day, once you... Once the client does decide they wanna step up and start putting out, you know, something that's gonna take a little bit more processing power, they're not stuck having to replace these devices just to be able to do that. So it is a balance for sure. Right. But that's kind of how we've decided, like, we'll start here and then figure out if we need to move up from that point. [00:14:11] S0: Yeah, I mean, having that little bit of headroom and it's funny, that was a word twenty years ago in technology was that, you don't bill for today, you bill for tomorrow and you need that headroom because otherwise you're gonna step back and switch everything out. From all the clients that you've worked with, and we don't wanna name any, can you share maybe some missteps, not to do kind of things that you're seeing clients learn?
00:14:42 · Darryl Kuder
[00:14:42] S1: Yeah. So we have a client, who has, players all over the world, and we work with them directly. And we were using one CMS. Actually, when we first started working with them, they were already on this CMS platform, and so we just helped them expand their network. But that CMS platform was somewhat limited, And what was happening is they were coming to us requesting, you know, can we custom build a feature into here that, you know, can do this? And can we custom build that? And, you know, it finally got to a point where we had to have a conversation with them and say, Look, you're asking for all these things for us to customize because the CMS doesn't just natively offer that. And so, it actually opened up the door for us to talk about these other CMS options with them and show them different things that these other CMSs have natively built into them. Okay. Whether you call it a widget or an app or whatever it might be, but a lot of CMSs are starting to get into that a little bit more and more. And so, you know, having that discussion with the client and kinda letting them understand that, okay, the the CMS platform we're currently on just is not gonna be enough for what we need, and we need to upgrade these, actually really opened the door for them and has expanded the capabilities of what they're able to do internally as far as corporate communications, and it was absolutely the right move for them to make that choice. And I will say on a side note, it's one of the things I love about BrightSign is that we can actually convert clients from one CMS to another very easily. And so we've taken advantage of that a lot. So I tell clients like, look, even if we start with this one CMS, whichever one it might be, it doesn't necessarily mean we're stuck on this forever.
00:16:36 · Judy Monnel, Darryl Kuder
[00:16:36] S0: Right. [00:16:36] S1: And as long as we put in the right piece of hardware upfront, we can actually very easily switch them over in the future. We've been doing that quite a bit to find that right CMS that fits perfectly. [00:16:51] S0: So, given your years and years of expertise, what are some of the biggest trends that you've seen when it comes to CMS and CMS strategies?
00:17:02 · Darryl Kuder
[00:17:02] S1: Well, think it's what I just mentioned. A lot of these CMSs are starting to build out little widgets or apps within their CMS that become more or less a drag and drop widget. So if I want to run Power BI, or I wanna run, like, YouTube live, like, a streaming video or, you know, something like that that, like, those are the things that we're starting to see that customer... Or CMSs are incorporating, and I think it has a lot to just do with customer demand. Know, maybe a Canva integration. If a client's been using Canva, you're starting to see a lot more CMSs add that. Ironically, Judy, one of the things that I struggle with is trying to work with a CMS that is not producing those types of things. Right. You know, we get approached a lot of times by a CMS who would like us to start using their product and they're not all built the same. Right. That's definitely, those are some of the big differentiators for us specifically in the markets that we serve are... Does your CMS have the ability to... Like, are you building out these additional widgets? Because they're definitely making a huge difference from an end user standpoint. Are you allowing us to deploy these on multiple types of hardware? Like, obviously, we like BrightSign, but if we need to deploy them on a system on a chip somewhere, you know, to satisfy some hardware they already have, like, are you doing those things and are you keeping up? With the new trend of AI? You know, I think we're still waiting to see sort of where things are gonna flush out. You know, there are some CMSs out there like Wallboard who are implementing AI and trying to be on the forefront of that, which I think is wonderful. But I think we're still a ways away from seeing what this next round of technology with AI is really gonna provide to the CMS platforms.
00:19:07 · Judy Monnel, Darryl Kuder
[00:19:07] S0: It's funny, because that one's kinda like my next question, what you see coming, or trends in the future. And obviously, AI is huge. Anything else maybe though, in [00:19:19] S1: terms [00:19:19] S0: of the client expectations or, you know, and I think it's amazing that the CMS companies are, you know, constantly innovating because after all, content is king, right, when it comes to digital signage.
00:19:19 · Judy Monnel, Darryl Kuder
[00:19:19] S0: of the client expectations or, you know, and I think it's amazing that the CMS companies are, you know, constantly innovating because after all, content is king, right, when it comes to digital signage. [00:19:39] S1: Yeah. You know, sometimes it's hard... I mean, we're not a software company. So, you know, from our standpoint, you know, we're somewhat at the mercy of what they decide to develop. But I can tell you, you know, we have conversations with the CMSs that we work with all the time, offering insight, like real world feedback saying, okay, this is what our customers are saying to us. These things are working, you know, it'd be nice to add these features. You know, one of the things that's actually becoming more and more important, not that it hasn't been important, so don't misunderstand what I'm about to say, but the, you know, the idea of being able to update firmware and, from a security standpoint, make sure that the hardware endpoints are secure and things like that, that is actually becoming something that, you know, outside of the content creation side, the other departments that are on these large enterprises are extremely concerned with. Right. And so having the CMSs build these tools in that make firmware updates easier and keeping the devices more secure and things like that, being SOC two compliant, like, all of these things that we're getting asked for by end users on a regular basis. A lot of companies won't even consider a CMS that is either not SOC two compliant or some type of iOS compliant. It's a big thing right now.