Top 6 Digital Signage Buying Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Fear of making a mistake

Being fearful of making a mistake is never a good mind-point, but you would be amazed at how that often affects the buying decision. It usually leads to the buyer making a short-term decision based on the purchase price and not looking at the long-term strategic value and operating cost of what they are buying.

Years of experience implementing digital signage, and the business advantage focus Cohesive brings to the table makes us a great choice with who to ‘partner’. Our approach is to arm you with the right information, show the possibilities and business improvements a strategic approach to your digital signage system can bring.

Buying on price

For the most basic digital signage system that may be fine, however, when you are looking beyond the short-term view, the purchase price is likely to be the lowest part of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). With Commercial or Enterprise level systems, TCO should be a dominant factor, above purchase price. And it is usually the lower-priced systems that end up being the costliest to run and have a higher TCO over the longer term.

At Cohesive, we look at how much of the work can be automated, and how much the efficiency of daily input can be improved to minimise time spent. We help design a system that works for you, content architecture that saves time & resources and training to apply the system for efficiency and effectiveness while keeping the operating costs down.

One customer was able to go from two staff-hours a day to almost zero staff-hours for two years. At the same time, it took the system from once a day updates, to being updated every twenty minutes and improving productivity by a massive 30%.

We cannot promise we can achieve the same for you, but it gives an example to show the possibilities we can bring.

Moxie Enterprise Digital Signage software is recognised as delivering a lower TCO.

Thinking you know it all

Fortunately, this is not overly common, but it can be one of the most dangerous from the purchaser’s viewpoint. Why dangerous? It can close minds.
This person has some experience with digital signage and writes a brief for the system based on system capabilities that they know. This approach tends to put a low ceiling on the system and can be a recipe for mediocrity.

We recommend preparing a brief heavily focused on strategic outcomes.

At Cohesive, we help people open their minds to the possibilities and can provide a digital communications platform with capabilities that have wowed many a hard head.

Being focused on the hardware

While display hardware is essential, it is what drives the system, that is paramount. But now we’re on the subject; the great thing with modern displays is that they are all good. Some are better for some situations than others – for sound reasons, we tend toward quality and robustness for most installations.

The latest TV technology is all about 4K, and even 8K – incredible image. The question is, do you need 4K for digital signage or is Full HD (FHD) sufficient? Well, it all depends. Most of the time, FHD (1920×1080) is more than enough. Unless your viewers are going to be very close to the screen or you are using huge screens, FHD is perfectly adequate. However, it’s not unlikely that FHD will become a thing of the past in the not too distant future, and because of that, should not be dismissed out of hand.

Focus on the digital signage platform primarily, the display hardware secondary.

Having the wrong people doing the buying

As bad as that may sound, it’s a truism that extends across many facets of life and business.
The three main culprits are:

• The people that will be using it that live in their ‘silo’ and do not, or cannot, take into account the larger organisation and whether what they are considering could bring strategic benefits to the whole organisation.
• The people making the buying decision who do not consider those who will be using it.
• Purchasing Officers who are not well briefed and think all digital signage solutions are much the same.

In a separate and select category of their own:
– Construction Project Managers; the ones that get bonuses based on cutting costs and deliver a system far below what you, the client, are paying for.
– Committees of Egos, where the most substantial Ego wins.

At Cohesive, we try to bring together all the stakeholders to deliver the best overall outcomes.

Not considering the strategic value, internal digital signage can bring.

This could be the subject of an article in its own right, but we’ll keep this brief.
Many organisations look at and implement digital signage solely with an outward-facing viewpoint, ignoring the considerable value of inward-facing digital signage.

Following implementing of outward-facing digital signage, one retail company, using the same system, added inward-facing signage to the system. They found the value balance to be 70/30 with the 70% value brought by the internal-facing signage.

Want to know more? Let’s talk.

Disclosure:
Cohesive is the Value Add Reseller (VAR) for Australia of Omnivex Digital Signage Software Platforms. Comments made about a Digital Signage Platform selection in this piece revolve around the Omnivex product. The comments are based on the selection criteria used when I was initially seeking a product that met or exceeded expectations of a product we could, with high confidence, supply to our top Corporate customers.
After a two-year search, Omnivex was selected, and, following reviews of a range of products over the years, has continued as the Platform of choice.
Omnivex is an Award-winning and highly recognised Commercial and Enterprise platform and comes highly recommended by Cohesive.
Omnivex Corporation is based in Toronto, Canada. Cohesive Owner, Gary Else, has a 16-year relationship with Omnivex. Cohesive is proud to be an Omnivex Partner.