Digital Signage for the SMB Market...Feb 2015 issue DS Magazine

Another great article by yours truly on what works for small and medium business for digital signage...in this month's Digital Signage Magazine (DSE 2015 issue)

Digital Signage for the SMB Market

By Jeff Porter (Porter Digital Signage Consulting)

If you’re a regular reader of this magazine, every month you’ll see some amazing case studies of the best of the best in digital signage.  Maybe it’s the 6500 Burger King Restaurants that SICOM and IST deployed in just 18 weeks, or the lovely interactive end caps that Stratecache deployed at Lowe’s, or maybe the award winning in-store experience at Sprint Stores by Scala and Two West.  And who can forget the Marriott GoBoard® that FourWinds Interactive did?   They’re big.  They’re high end.  And they cost a lot of money.

At the other end of the spectrum however, you’ve got the Small and Medium Business (SMB) owner that wants to deploy digital signage and compete with the big boys, but he’s got neither the budget nor the technical staff to pull off an enterprise scale digital signage network.  And typical system integrators and AV resellers won’t even return a call for a low budget project.  But make no mistake…there are a LOT of small businesses that could benefit from digital signage, but they need a different approach from the traditional enterprise platforms.

According to the US Small Business Administration stats, there are 23 million small businesses in the US that account for 54% of all US Sales.  And while corporate America has been "downsizing", the rate of small business "start-ups" has grown 49% since 1982, and the rate for small business failures has declined.  So the potential market here for digital signage is huge.  And if you think about it, the “base of the pyramid” is wide and deep, compared to the few large high deployments that you read about.

The SMB market, however, has a few unique requirements that narrow the choices pretty quickly.  Let’s review those requirements and take an in-depth look at some of the options for the SMB market.

1    1. It needs to be ‘self service digital signage’.  The small business owner needs to be able to run this system himself.
2.       It needs to be hosted in the cloud or run a local LAN.  Needing to setup your own servers is a show stopper for the SMB.
3.       It needs appliance based players.  PCs are too hard to configure.  It’s gotta be simple.
4.       It needs low upfront costs, and low monthly fees.

So which digital signage platforms meet these criterion?  Scala Enterprise? No.  FourWinds?  No.  Stratecache?  No.  Omnivex?  No.  The list goes on.  No offense to these platforms.  They are the stalwarts of the industry for enterprise, but not for small business owners.  So who’s left?

Broadsign, SignChannel by Scala, SignageLive, Media Signage, Samsung’s MagicInfo, LG’s SuperSign and a relative new comer Onsign.tv.  Let’s take a closer look at each.

Broadsign (www.broadsign.com ) is probably the most famous company on this list.  Their system is fully hosted, so there are no servers to set up and their basic monthly fee is just $25/month per player ($45/m for a fully managed service).  They have a turnkey $149 Android player to make installation super simple.   On the downside, their system is fairly sophisticated, so the learning curve is a bit steep.  They have a ton of videos online to guide you through, but this is not for the meek of heart.  You’re going to need to do a deep dive to manage this network yourself.  So that $45/month fully managed service might sound like a better deal.  Also, the Broadsign Administrator GUI is not a web based GUI.  You’ll need to install that software on your PC.  It works over the Internet, but if you’re expecting to do everything from a web browser, this is not your platform.

SignChannel by Scala (www.signchannel.com) was born to address the SMB market from the beginning.  It’s super simple to use.  Practically no training is required.  SignChannel is very easy to set up.  It works with a variety of low cost preconfigured appliance players from folks like IAdea (www.iadea.com ).  And has a low monthly fee of $30/month per player, but that includes live news, weather, sports and stock feeds.  There are hundreds of professionally designed templates that are easy to use and configure from any web browser.  It’s completely hosted on Amazon’s cloud, so there’s nothing to worry about server wise.  The only downside is that it’s only a full screen solution.  It you need multiple zones, this is not your platform.  (But I claim that all of those CNN-like and Bloomberg-like tickers are completely over rated for most folks.)  [Full disclosure here: When I worked for Scala years ago, the SignChannel service was my baby, so I’m somewhat biased, but it does work well for full screen digital signage.]

SignageLive (www.signagelive.com ) contrary to SignChannel, SignageLive does have multi-zone support.  It’s fully hosted, works with a variety of low cost appliance players (such as IAdea and In-Store Screen) as well as PCs (but I don’t recommend a PC player for the SMB guy…you want something plug and play, not plug and pray).  The web based GUI is a little trickier to figure out, but not as complex to learn as Broadsign.  So it’s still something that a small business owner could pick up in a few days time.  They have a tiered service offering starting at just $15/month for a basic service full screen only (like SignChannel) or $30/month for multizone layouts with additional bandwidth and storage.   SignageLive have embraced the Samsung Smart Signage platform in a big way.  Nearly all COMMERCIAL displays from Samsung have a built-in digital signage player.  It’s not as powerful as your typical PC player these days, but for many applications, it’s just fine.  This simplifies the clutter immensely.  Just plug the Samsung screen into a network jack and power it up.  No separate media player is required.  You do need to point your Samsung screen at the SignageLive servers, so there’s a bit of juggling to do with the IR remote of the screen to set that up.  But once that’s done, you’ll get a code on the screen.  Login into your SignageLive account, and voila, your player is online.

Media Signage (www.digitalsignage.com ) is another low cost option.  Clearly they have the best web address!  They have a free version, but many will likely want to upgrade to their $99/month version.  That may sound like a lot, compared to the others, but this is for as many players as you want.  Other companies charge per month per player.  Media Signage charges a flat $99 per month regardless of the number of players.  They do support PC players as well as, but for the small business owner, I’d stay with the Android based players that they sell for $125-$149.  The $125 model plugs directly into the HDMI port of a screen (similar to a Google Chromecast “dongle”), but you’ll need to power it somehow via USB AC adaptor or from the monitor (if the TV supports that).  The $149 version is a standalone box, similar to the IAdea media players (for SignChannel and SignageLive).

A relative newcomer to digital signage software is Onsign.tv (http://www.onsign.tv )  This cloud based platform for digital signage is incredibly easy to use for the beginner.  They have support for both Android and Windows based players.  For a small business owner, I’d go with an Android based solution.  It’s much easier to setup and configure.  Although you can easily download the onsign.tv app from the Google Play store and run that on any Android device, I would suggest getting a media player that was designed with digital signage in mind that allows for full remote management (such as those from IAdea).  At just $15/month per player (or $10/month for more than 20 players) this service is one of the lowest cost options with full Internet connectivity and complete management from the web.  It does offer multizone capability, and includes many widgets for RSS feeds, clocks and weather.  They offer a free 30 day trial for up to 5 players, so it’s worth a serious look.

Many of the hardware vendors have a bundled software solution with their screens or media players.  You might think that FREE is about as cheap as you can get, but there are some limitations.  Let’s take a look at some of the more popular choices here.

Both Samsung and LG offer screens with BUILT IN players.  Plug a network cable directly into the screen (or set up a Wi-Fi connection) and you’re done.  No separate media player is required.  Both companies are encouraging third party digital signage software companies to support their built in player, but they also offer a free software alternative to get you started. 

Samsung has a free software product called MagicInfo.  Simply download and install this software to your PC and you can create a USB stick with your content , playlist and schedule, and carry that to your screen, or if your Samsung screen is on your local LAN, control it over the network.  This will ONLY work with Samsung screens and only COMMERCIAL Samsung screens (not Samsung’s consumer screens).  Your PC and your screen need to be on the same local LAN (eg: in the same building) because it doesn’t work over the public Internet.  A typical Samsung commercial screen, might cost northwards of $1000 for a 48” screen.  So there is a bit of a premium for these industrialized commercial screens, but the quality and reliability of their screens are second to none these days.

LG’s offering is called SuperSign.  Again, like Samsung’s offering, you download and install the free software to your PC and create either a USB stick with your content, playlist and schedule, or if the LG screen in on your local LAN, control it remotely.  SuperSign only works with LG screens, and only LG’s Commercial Screens (named “LG SuperSign TV” either 42”, 47” or 55”).  The SuperSign TVs have built in TV Tuners, so if you’d like to have live TV in your sports bar with drink specials on the side, you can do that with LG’s offering.  They also have a way to lock out the IR remote and front panel buttons to keep folks from turning off the screen. 

The bigger problem for small businesses is how do you purchase a COMMERCIAL screen from Samsung or LG, and how much extra is that going to cost over a cheaper consumer screen that you might buy at Best Buy or Sam’s Club.  A cheap consumer 40” LED LCD today is about $300 at retail.  An LG SuperSignTV display from CDW, Newegg or B&H Photo will run about $500-600 for a 42”, $700-800 for a 47”, or $1100-1200 for a 55” screen.  Keep in mind however, that with a consumer grade TV, it wasn’t really designed for 7x24 operation, and you’ll need to purchase an outboard media player that might cost you another $300.  So although you may think you are saving money with a consumer screen, it might cost you more in the long run to replace it.  So compare the cost of a SuperSignTV at $500 to a cheap consumer LCD screen and separate media player for $600 and you’ll soon realize that the SuperSignTV is actually a pretty good deal.  If you are still convinced that cheap consumer LCDs are the way to go, you may wish to consider adding an extended warranty to your purchase, just in case.

BrightSign (http://www.brightsign.biz ) is well known for their stand alone media players.  Leveraging technology from their Roku sister company, they have a wide range of products for every budget, including new 4K media players.  They too have a free software package you can download and install on your PC called BrightAuthor, which lets you easily create a playlist of media items and transfer that via USB stick to your BrightSign player.  For a monthly fee, BrightAuthor can also connect to a cloud based service (BrightSign Network) to transmit your content from BrightAuthor to your BrightSign player over the Internet.  BrightAuthor does support multizone layouts and has a variety of options for RSS feeds or live video or even “push button to play” modules.  It’s relatively simple to use for the small business owner.

IAdea (http://www.iadea.com ) is also well known for their stand alone media players.  They have wide support for their media players from a large number of third party software companies.  But they too offer a free, simple to use, software package for your PC to manage content via USB stick or the local LAN called SignApps Express.  It does support multiple zones, and is fairly intuitive to use.  It does not work over the Internet, so you’ll need to have your PC and your media player on the same LAN (eg: in the same building).   IAdea’s latest products have the latest Android OS and feature quad core processors, so handling HD videos and tickers are no problem.  With wide support of many third party software companies, IAdea does not lock you in to their proprietary software like Samsung, LG or BrightSign.  IAdea also offers a variety of All-in-One “signboards” typically 10” to 22” with built in players.  These are great for counter top displays or for places that you just don’t have room for a traditional 40” or larger LCD.

There are a couple of other companies worth mentioning that specialize in smaller All-in-One retail displays -- In Store Screen (http://www.instorescreen.us ) and Outform (http://www.outform.com ) .  Both offer very attractive integrated all-in-one android screens with built in players in a variety of shapes and sizes.  So if you’re looking for something that’s a lot sexier looking than a typical LCD monitor, check these guys out.  You’ll pay a little bit more for the “look”, but because they are Android based, you’ll have a decent number of third party software companies supporting them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Porter is one of the industry’s leading experts in digital signage and is the founder of Porter Digital Signage Consulting.  From business planning, to sales and marketing and technology choices, Porter has been helping his clients get all the moving parts of digital signage in alignment for success.  Prior to heading his own consulting business, Mr. Porter was employed by Scala, Commodore, Bell Labs and Eastman Kodak.  Mr. Porter holds a BSEE from Purdue University and a MS from the University of Illinois.  He can be contacted at jeff@porterdigitalsignage.com or by phone 610-202-7676.