What is Digital Signage? Digital signage has become a critical tool within the retail industry for effectively communicating and interacting with both customers and employees. Other businesses and organizations use digital signage as a valuable tool to increase revenue, foot traffic and differentiate themselves from the competition. Digital signage can also enhance the in-store customer experience by reducing perceived wait times and improving overall communication (including branding and advertising) to existing and potential new customers.

By selecting the appropriate display and software for your unique environment and communication needs, digital signage solutions can help deliver a variety of dynamic information using audio, video, still or moving images. Digital signage software allows you to keep messaging current and relevant by providing editing and content distribution in real time by location or display.

How Will Digital Signage Benefit My Business?

A digital signage deployment can help your company achieve multiple benefits, including:

• Content control tools - manage content in real time
• Cost savings over traditional signage - eliminate design, printing and distribution costs
• Proof of performance - tie sales performance and productivity to key communication goals

How Can I Help My Business Embrace Digital Signage Solutions?

Today's organizations realize the importance of frequent, relevant communication with their customers and employees. Many are utilizing digital signage solutions to enhance the customer experience to offer:

• Price promotions
• Interactive touch screens
• Product and information finders
• Branding and advertisement vehicles
• Corporate communications

What Comprises a Digital Signage Solution?

The two key components of any digital signage solution are applications and displays.

Depending upon your environment, additional components—display mounts, kiosk housings, storage systems, workstation systems or network upgrades—may be required to maximize your digital signage solution.

Content Creation and Control Applications
For digital signage solutions that span multiple location or displays, it is critical to choose a digital signage system that enables the content manager to schedule content deployment based on dates, time of day or locations of displays. Further, the application should enable simple (yet highly-effective) creation of video, text and graphic messages that anyone can manage.

For single display environments, existing software applications such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft PowerPoint can be effective content creation applications.

Displays
When deploying a digital signage solutions, choose commercial-grade flat panel LCD displays over consumer-grade displays. Commercial-grade LCDs have ruggedized casing and average 12-24 hour run times. They are sealed to keep out dust and contaminants and usually come with a three-year warranty vs. one year for their consumer counterparts. Some manufacturers will void warranties of consumer displays if they are used in a commercial environment.

Getting Started with Digital Signage

Your NDM Account Manager and certified specialists are ready to assist you with every phase of choosing and leveraging the right solution for your IT environment. Our approach includes:

• An initial discovery session to understand your goals, requirements and budget
• An assessment review of your existing environment and definition of project requirements
• Detailed vendor evaluations, recommendations, future design and proof of concept
• Procurement, configuration and deployment of the final solution
• Ongoing product lifecycle support