datmedia insight and expertise:

Five Things That Make A Good CMS

A good content management system is the glue that holds a digital signage network together.

No one wants to have several displays in different locations with the only way to update them is to drive around town with a pocket full of USBs. True story – we had a client who did exactly that. When they had new content, they’d load up USB keys then travel all over the city and manually insert them into each display. It was quicker than the post, cheaper than a courier but a huge waste of time, right?

There’s a smarter way which lets you update any display in your network with the click of a mouse. Digital signage software will let you maintain your schedules anywhere you can get data reception. Another true story – a client of ours has been known to update their CMS from a phone while sitting at the beach. We call that Working From Home, In Style.

So what does a good CMS need to do?

1). It needs to work at scale. Whether you’re updating content on 1 display 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 tell a story, 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 a CMS 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 on a browser to load a file, or make a simple adjustment to a playlist. 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.

Laqorr does all this and more. Download our cheat-sheet 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, get in touch with one of our subject matter experts today.