Why projects fail
The five reasons screen networks get switched off, in the order we actually encounter them. Only one of them is a technology problem.
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How to Choose a Digital Signage Supplier
This guide hands you the questions to ask us. We are publishing it anyway, because the suppliers who do badly against this list are the ones we lose work to on price and then get called to replace two years later.
Eleven questions worth asking
- Which content management platform are you proposing, and will you name it in writing before I sign?
- Whose name are the licences in, and what happens to my network if I stop using you?
- Who physically performs the installation, and who performs it in the other cities on my list?
- What is your response time, and is that remote response or on-site attendance?
- What is specifically excluded from the support agreement?
- Who is responsible for the content after launch, and is that in this quote?
- How will I know a screen has failed, and will you tell me or will I find out?
- What happens when the display model is discontinued in three years?
- Can I see the monitoring myself, or do I have to take uptime on trust?
- What is the five-year cost, not the first-year cost?
- Can I speak to a customer with a network the same size as mine?
The answers that should worry you
"We will decide the platform later" usually means a reseller agreement they do not want to disclose. "The licences are in our name" means leaving them costs you the network. "Content is not in scope" is fine if you have a team, and a serious problem if you do not and nobody has said so.
The most common expensive answer is a response time that turns out to be remote-only, with on-site attendance quoted separately at a call-out rate. That is a legitimate model, but it needs to be visible before you sign rather than discovered during your first outage.
When not to use a company like ours
If you have one or two screens, content you already produce, and someone in-house who genuinely enjoys this sort of thing, a full-service supplier is overhead you do not need. Buy a good commercial display, a self-service platform licence, and pay an installer to mount it properly.
We would rather tell you that now than sell you a managed service you will resent paying for. The customers we do best work for are the ones where the screens have a real job and nobody has spare hours.
Questions people actually ask
Should we run a formal tender?
For a large network, yes, and the most useful thing you can do is write the specification before you approach anyone. If each supplier writes their own specification you will receive three quotes that cannot be compared. We will write you a specification you can put out to tender, including to our competitors.
How do we compare quotes that look completely different?
Normalise them to five years and to the three cost lines: hardware, licensing, and content plus management. Most of the apparent difference between quotes is scope, not price, and the cheapest one is usually missing the third line entirely.
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Start a project
Tell us about the space. We will tell you what belongs in it.
A first conversation costs you nothing and usually takes twenty minutes. Bring a photo of the wall and a rough idea of what you want it to do.
- A written specification you can price against anyone
- The platform we would run, named before you sign
- Hardware and content costed separately, so you can see both
- No obligation, and no pressure to buy screens you do not need