Digital Signage Today
00:08:54 · Darryl Kuder
[00:08:54] S1: Yeah. I mean, ideally, we need the client to know ahead of time. If they're looking to invest this money and they're gonna spend money on the hardware, the installation, the software, all this kind of stuff, especially if there's a lot of different screens that they're gonna deploy. They really need to have a good understanding of ahead of time what type of content it is that that they're going to wanna display. You know, a great example of that, even when it comes to corporate communications, is do they wanna do something, where the screen is broken out into multiple sections so they can display multiple types of content at once? And if they do, who's gonna design that content? Are they capable of updating it on a regular basis? Do we need to have what I would call filler content? You know, third party feeds that come in like news feeds, weather feeds, you know, things like that just to keep stuff fresh. Right. So, if you're not having those conversations upfront, it makes it really difficult to figure out what CMS you wanna use or what might be the ideal CMS for that. It also makes it hard to figure out what's the hardware. Anyone can go in and say, alright, I'm gonna use the most advanced piece of hardware on the market. Yeah. That's no problem. But when you really start coming down to budgets and things like that, you realize, okay, we actually do need to figure out what is the the sweet spot from a from a hardware perspective. I mean, we use BrightSign all the time, and we have really found that it is it is like the premier digital signage product on the market, and they've got multiple levels of products. And their entry level product may not be a good enough product to work with some of the higher level CMSs. And so you really need to kind of figure that out upfront.
00:10:39 · Judy Monnel
[00:10:39] S0: You know, to me, an important aspect is that you don't build digital signage for today only. You kinda... You have to keep in mind what you're gonna need in the future as well, right?
00:10:53 · Darryl Kuder
[00:10:53] S1: Yeah. And, you know, that's actually some of the hardest things to figure out from an end user's perspective. Because a lot of times, like we just talked about, even if they know upfront what they wanna do, you know, like, again, let's just say it's full screen images and videos, like, the most simple way to do this. And that they're pretty convinced that that's what they're gonna do for the next couple years. You know, you kinda have to figure out, well, is that something that... Are we just gonna design this system specifically for that and for nothing else? Or how how do we get them to think about other types of content that they may want to deploy in the future? So I'll give you an example. One of the things that we... Or one of the CMSs that that we really like is Corbit. And what CMS like Corbit offers is a lot more than just basic signage opportunities. You know, they offer the ability to do room scheduling and other types of mobile app type functionality. And so, when we're talking to a customer about corporate communications, especially an enterprise customer, asking questions like, would you find any value in having employees that don't have access to a PC? Like, they're not they're not working behind a desk. Maybe they're on a factory floor or something like that. Is there any value in having those employees have the ability to communicate with you? Or at least to get your messaging that maybe your employees in the office are already saying. And so, it can be sometimes a little bit a challenge because they have never thought about that.
00:12:30 · Judy Monnel, Darryl Kuder
[00:12:30] S0: Right, right. You know, I would think the average customer obviously is not an expert like yourself. And they don't even know, you know, what the range of possibility is, you know? And since many of your projects include multiple CMS platform, how do you ensure that the media players, and you touched on this a little bit earlier, but how that media player can manage and distribute content, you know, without any blips and, you know, stuff. [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.
00:13:03 · 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.