datmedia insight and expertise:

Choosing Digital Signage Software

A good CMS is the key to digital signage network.

Good digital signage software is the key. Even a little bit of research can be overwhelming at first. However you’ll soon start to make sense of the project once you ask yourself these basic questions:

What are my objectives
How will I measure success?
Where are my displays, and how many are there?
Who will be responsible to run the software?
Do they have resources available? Is this budgeted?
What does the content look like, and how will it be produced?

The key to success is about research, planning and assigning responsibility. Once you know how everyone will engage with the digital signage network, what you want from digital signage software (or content management system – CMS) will become evident.

Good digital signage software like Laqorr * is the glue that holds a network together. Some are sold on an enterprise basis — meant to be installed and managed by a larger customer’s IT team. However, the majority of CMS are cloud-based platforms, with multiple end users accessing the system.

What does a good CMS need to do?

1). It needs to work at scale. Whether you’re updating content on 1 or 100 displays, you need a CMS that makes that process easy. You don’t want to have to update each display separately, you need to be able to issue one command that sends every screen new content at once.

2). It needs to play still images and video. There’s nothing as captivating as the moving image to sell your brand or inform customers. Yet there are times when a still image is more appropriate, or legally required. Therefore your CMS must be able to play both, and play them seamlessly.

3). Don’t stop there. While images and video are the bread and butter of digital signage, it’s just as important to be able to bring up html files, websites and run apps on your network. You need good digital signage software that can do all that while also being able to assign different elements to different areas of the screen.

4). It needs to be web-based technology. No one wants to have to visit the office at 10pm because a player in the network is not running the correct video. However, few of us mind logging in to make a simple adjustment. It takes seconds, not hours.

5). Most importantly, it needs to be secure. It is critical that your CMS does not compromise the data security of your company. You need complete confidence that no one can hack your CMS and burrow further into your organisation’s IT network, nor compromise your digital signage network itself.

Choose the right platform

This can be perplexing, but there are a few main factors to help you get started.

Budget

Most cloud-based systems charge by the device, per month. On-premise systems usually have one-time costs which can work better if the system is funded as a capital cost (not an ongoing operating expense).

Operating style

Cloud-based systems leave the IT demands to the software as a service (SaaS) provider. Most end users now are opting for SaaS — outsourcing the system (and sometimes even operating tasks like scheduling and monitoring) to a service provider.

Content

Ultimately, the biggest influencer on CMS selection is what will be on the screen. For example, a platform designed for finance services may not suit the needs for retail marketing. A CMS that is incredibly robust and powerful might be over-engineered for the task at hand (and that brings you back to budget).

Where to start?

Laqorr* is good digital signage software. It does all this and more. Download our CMS Buying Guide to see how easy it is to load content, build a playlist and run media content on a national (or international) network of displays.

If you’d like to learn more about how Laqorr is the perfect fit for a digital signage network, try a free demo device at your own site, on your own time. Get in touch with one of our subject matter experts today.

*Many people ask. Laqorr is pronounced La-Core