It has been reported that the Digital Signage industry has over 400 forms of content management software and growing. As solutions providers this is an overwhelming quantity of information to ingest and disseminate for our clients.
I am certain that each of the manufacturers have invested tremendous resources to develop, and market their product. Additionally, have done due diligence on the particular market segment which they are focusing their product.
Both integrators and end users can quickly discern if a particular software solution is designed for their needs, or is pushing the software to capabilities beyond the intended use. A challenge for both the customer, and the integrator is access to software in a real life (customer centric) environment.
Having attended a plethora of webinar's, training sessions, and online demonstrations, we are limited to what the software vendor has created for their presentation/training. These events do provide potential clients the ability to view various forms Digital Signage content management interfaces, and determine if a particular software will best meet their needs.
One can quickly identify that all manufacturers of software can direct financial resources to present the highest quality of active Digital Signage. We have found that this value is not as significant as the amount of energy focused on demonstrating the user interface for creating the content.
What we have found as the bigger challenge, is the ability to demonstrate to our clients (live), meaning face to face, the content management solution best suited for their application. Where some manufacturers provide trial (30 day limited use) versions, the majority have a strategy where customers can view screenshots via websites, or participate in a webinar. I can't comment from the vendors perspective on how successful this model has been. Yet, I can share that is both difficult for the integrator, and troublesome for the customer.
We have found that this particular hurdle provides an opportunity for us to increase the depth of services offered to our clients. Yet, it continues to present us with a challenge in gaining the appropriate amount of knowledge, both internally, and through vendor relationships, to present our clients with the most functional software solution for their specific Digital Signage project.
So to the developers of Digital Signage software solutions, is their another strategy which could be evaluated to better support the integrators? Requirements for financial commitments for evaluation hardware may separate the wheat from the weed, but may be missing the broader opportunity.
I am certain that each of the manufacturers have invested tremendous resources to develop, and market their product. Additionally, have done due diligence on the particular market segment which they are focusing their product.
Both integrators and end users can quickly discern if a particular software solution is designed for their needs, or is pushing the software to capabilities beyond the intended use. A challenge for both the customer, and the integrator is access to software in a real life (customer centric) environment.
Having attended a plethora of webinar's, training sessions, and online demonstrations, we are limited to what the software vendor has created for their presentation/training. These events do provide potential clients the ability to view various forms Digital Signage content management interfaces, and determine if a particular software will best meet their needs.
One can quickly identify that all manufacturers of software can direct financial resources to present the highest quality of active Digital Signage. We have found that this value is not as significant as the amount of energy focused on demonstrating the user interface for creating the content.
What we have found as the bigger challenge, is the ability to demonstrate to our clients (live), meaning face to face, the content management solution best suited for their application. Where some manufacturers provide trial (30 day limited use) versions, the majority have a strategy where customers can view screenshots via websites, or participate in a webinar. I can't comment from the vendors perspective on how successful this model has been. Yet, I can share that is both difficult for the integrator, and troublesome for the customer.
We have found that this particular hurdle provides an opportunity for us to increase the depth of services offered to our clients. Yet, it continues to present us with a challenge in gaining the appropriate amount of knowledge, both internally, and through vendor relationships, to present our clients with the most functional software solution for their specific Digital Signage project.
So to the developers of Digital Signage software solutions, is their another strategy which could be evaluated to better support the integrators? Requirements for financial commitments for evaluation hardware may separate the wheat from the weed, but may be missing the broader opportunity.
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