Using digital signage in an enterprise environment, should you choose an AV or IT solution?

When looking at digital signage wiki tells us:
Digital signage are electronic displays that are installed in public spaces. Digital signs are typically used to entertain, inform or advertise (together known as "adfotainment"). Major benefits of digital signs over traditional static signs are that the content can be exchanged without effort, animations can be shown, the signs can adapt to the context and audience, and even be interactive. Digital signage advertising is a form of out-of-home advertising in which content and messages are displayed on digital signs, typically with the goal of delivering targeted messages to specific locations at specific times.

Key points here are that we use them to entertain, inform or advertise and that they can easily adapt to context and audience. This makes it a great tool for marketing/sales but also for use in a corporate environment. When looking at implementations in a corporate environment there are some obvious benefits compared to traditional systems like e.g. paper based posters to go for a digital signage solution:

• Greater speed to communicate and (re)act,
• Cost saving compared to print and distribute paper based posters,
• Less waste and impact on environment compared to e.g. paper based posters,
• Much more possibilities in terms of media to use (text, audio, video)
• Possibilities for interactivity
• Image (a wall with 1 big screen looks different than a lot of posters on the same wall)

However there are some challenges as well that organizations will face when implementing a digital signage solution to communicate to their staff (and customers at the location of the office):

• In general the available systems are proprietary which makes it hard to expand them (in size) or to add new functionality to the implementation, especially when this is not standard functionality of the product as is. This means that whenever selecting the product and the partner you do not only need to look at the current needs and demands but also at the future to avoid a disinvestment
• How to use the screens and fit them into the corporate managed infrastructure. Are you using the screens only for showing content or are the part of a larger vision where you for example use them for displaying corporate information when idle. Are you considering using existing screens to be part of the system (and do not think about the obvious screens only, what about the room reservation system screens)
  
  One of the biggest strengths of digital signage is the ability to update content across all screens from a central location — it represents the end of counting on employees to travel from location to location, changing POP materials turning the devices on or off. But surprisingly, most of the people digital signage today surveyed aren’t taking advantage of this — more than half of the respondents who use digital signage have their screens centrally networked. Instead, they are relying on “sneakernet” update methods, such as manually inserting DVDs or flash cards at the screen level.
  
• Who is allowed to generate content, is there a workflow required between creation and publication. Will all employees be able to generate content but before publication it needs to be signed of by the editor (to check the content against the guidelines, guard the corporate style and make sure the content is appropriate). Is the content already available on the corporate network or will this be delivered by e.g. a 3rd party
• What type of content (audio, video (standard definition, high definition and live streams), text and which formats are needed)
• What type of employees do you have and what is your companies working style. Is everybody always in the office or is everybody working flexible, not just flexible seating but also flexible locations (working from home, hotel, airport, customer location) and how do you like to fit this in the communication plan
• What about different content for different target audiences (customers vs employees, office bound employees versus home working/traveling employees, different physical office locations)
  

From this point of view it would be wise when looking for a digital signage system not to focus on the traditional solutions only but also look in the ICT domain and explore the options a SharePoint based digital signage system can do for you (great examples are

netpresenter and advantive) . These systems in general are:

• Less rigid since it’s a platform on which you can easily create extensions
• Far more easy to integrate in your existing infrastructure and for a lot of companies it already is integrated to a certain extend before starting off building a digital signage solution on top of the platform.
• Give more possibilities to reach out to your employees that are working from a location that is not your office. You can for example also publish to a screensaver or tickertape on any employees pc
• Easy to integrate with your existing intranet and extranet
• Completely integrated with all office products you probably already use so information publishing can be done directly from the applications used to create the info (while you can still use workflow management for approval before publishing)
• Cheaper (especially if you already have the licenses for SharePoint)
• Managing the digital signage environment can be done with the existing management tools you also use for managing the rest of your infrastructure. Also managing a sharepoint based environment is managing something familiar instead of a total new concept

Again this is a great example of IT and AV blending together and creating new opportunities for cost savings while increasing flexibility, agility and availability