What I'm Working On: Digital Signage
Working OnSo what the heck does a guy working for the Evolving Technologies Organization do all day? Work! Yes, as fun as the job is it is still work!
My first project with the new organization had to do with a
technology that isn’t exactly new but it is new to AT&T. The technology is digital signage and it’s
the idea of taking a wide screen monitor and filling that monitor with different
streams of information. Seen more and
more in the retail and hospitality industry, we’re looking at digital signage
as another form of employee communications.
As a society we are much more visual today that we were even 15 years
ago. It wasn’t all that long ago that we
read our news in the newspaper or listened to it on the radio. Today, cable TV and the Internet bring us our
news and information on demand and in full color and full motion.
When I think of digital signage I think of a billboard, a billboard not for single ad but for multiple ads or multiple streams of information. Company news and events, rewards and recognition and even live TV can all be displayed on a single monitor. With the right software call centers can even use this technology to display their call statistics for their employees. Call stats like the number of calls currently on hold or maybe the number one employee in sales.
We are currently evaluating a product called TargetVision from Symon Communications for our digital signage needs. A basic set up would consist of a Symon Server a Symon Digital Appliance (SDA) and a large LCD Monitor. We are recommending LCD over plasmas at this point due to the likelihood of burn in on the plasmas. Content is developed on the server then downloaded by the SDAs then displayed on the monitors. More complicated set-ups obviously exist to include multiple monitor being fed from one SDA.
I’m really excited about this technology and it actually brings be full circle back into my first job with the company. Back then we made a similar home grown system called TechNet. With TechNet we deployed a CRT TV and computer to every garage in the Midwest region. These computers are connected to a web server over the company network. TechNet is used to keep the technicians informed of company news and to provide them with training. In a sense Symon’s product is the next generation of the TechNet project I helped to develop years ago.
Well that’s all I’ll bore you with for now. If you or your company is working on digital signage I’d be curious to hear how it is working for you. If you have any questions please let me know.
Good Day!Ryan
I'm curious as to what "the company" is.
Good luck!
Thanks for the reply. It's a very exciting time for the DS industry thats for sure. What kind of documentation do you have, if any, that can help a company prove in DS? Simply from a employee communications tool, what is or how can I measure the ROI?
Oh and "the company", is the company I work for! :)
Ryan
Digital Signage is a very exciting place to be right now. Although the technology has been around a long time, large deployments are really just beginning to take place. I am work with a group called Zero-In Media and we install and operate networks of digital signage. Our software partner is Scala, who you are probably familiar with if you have been researching software for your project (www.scala.com). We have installed a number of corporate communication networks using Scala's technology and are currently in the process of a similar project for a large rollout with a major Fortune 25 organization. Please let me know if you would like us to give a presentation on Scala in effort to compare to Target Vision.
Best Regards,
Mitch
888.260.7291 x101
We currently offer SMS (text message) integration with realtime feedback. A sales network does not benefit from website integration unless it's an Internet Cafe or similar. Also, there are devices that will measure eye movement, but they are expensive. Or, while we were sipping some beverages I brought up this issue with my friend and he brought up a good point, just pay some college kid to count people. He can call it data collection and alaysis.
As for the documentation, ahh...remember, this is a new(er) technology, at least here in the States. While I'm sure others have done the data collection, my ad newtwork is still small and I just now am starting to get the retail, corporate and educational roll-out as Mitch is.
As you decide, you also need to look at the total cost of the hardware/software and how many of the features you actually will use. There are a LOT of solutions. If you want to play only HD video, devices live the MVIX player are perfect. (Although, it is NOT a DS device with multiple zone and interactive/dynamic functionality.) And, of course, someone's got to produce the content. Our SMP-Web makes any web designer a digital signage content producer because it uses a "browser-less" firefox instance for the most dynamic signage.
Anyway, in danger of making your blog a sales pitch...so I'll stop.
PS Call anytime :)
Thank you both for the feedback it is very helpful. Chris I had not thought about calling people to action and I like the idea of asking them to text message. I may look into that.
Mitchell,
Scala is another vendor we are looking at. What makes your company different than going to Scala directly?
Ryan
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