Digital signage is now at the forefront of elevating customer experiences.
Consider any physical or in-person interaction an individual has with a brand or business. Almost everywhere, digital displays provide information, content or visuals that are critical to the experience. But what happens when that experience is broken, interrupted or outdated?
Flight information unavailable. Inaccurate wayfinding or transport times. Menu items not for sale. Advertising dollars wasted. Incorrect scores or broken livestreams at a sporting event. Entertainment experiences ruined.
This is why resiliency has taken center stage in digital signage conversations. It’s not enough for an application to work on day one. It must work consistently, stand strong against risks and evolve with business needs. It’s shifting from “can I play or display this content,” to “how can we maintain our displays and signage effectively, and mitigate risk?”
Here are three key areas of focus that promote resilient digital signage experiences.
Reliability
Behind every digital signage application is an investment of time, money and effort. Whether a sign in a storefront, or a product display, or a screen at a sporting venue, a lot of strategic thinking and business alignment went into that decision. After all that input from so many stakeholders, unreliability in digital signage hardware or software cannot be the broken link in the chain.
Consider that over $3 trillion dollars is at risk across the globe from poor customer service and bad experiences – both situations where digital signage is involved in the process. So, in many cases, digital signage doesn’t just represent lost opportunity — it can lead to consequences from consumers who demand that businesses deliver reliable experiences. For example, broken signage when people need information can cause panic and lead to negative brand perception. As a result, the ability to maintain reliability in these systems is crucial in ensuring that content is consistently accurate and available when needed. Businesses must define what a great experience looks like, but also anticipate what a poor experience might entail. What would a failed system look like, what would be the consequences, and how can you avoid that happening?
From a hardware perspective, innovation continues to promote longevity. This includes fan-less designs to heat-dissipating enclosures, so hardware is built to balance performance and reliability and stand the test of time. From a software perspective, there are now digital signage players that come with self-healing software capabilities so that, in the wake of a poor update — something we’ve seen often in 2024 — or faulty line of code, the system will revert to its latest working version, avoiding interruption.
Security
Reliable players are a must, but they also need to be secure. As we established, digital signage plays an important role in influencing, educating and informing people. Vulnerable applications bring about serious risk —risk that can severely impact the perception of a business or brand. Many experts and digital signage professionals reading this can recall a story or two in which an application was compromised to negative effect. IT are keenly involved in all technology deployments – and most hardware and software undergoes months of security review.
Watch: Tackling Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities in Digital Signage
The challenge? Too often, security is an afterthought when it comes to digital signage. That conversation is shifting, but it needs to happen faster. For example, during the piloting or deployment phase, businesses need to ask the right questions:
- What software does your player run?
- How is the software managed and updated over time?
- What applications run on this player?
- What safeguards are in place to protect content and the player?
- In the case of a malfunction or broken engagement, what is the recovery process?
The relationship between hardware and software is borderline inseparable. In the example of digital signage, the viability of hardware that could theoretically run signage for a decade plus is rendered obselte if the core operating system is not updated alongside it. While the hardware capability may still be appropriate, outdated software means added risk of poor security and poor user experience.
Questions around security are not easy, but addressing them before deployment provides peace of mind. It ensures all stakeholders have confidence that protections and risk mitigation measures are in place. It also helps businesses understand the risks tied to various operating systems, CMS integrations and applications, allowing them to make informed decisions.
Management and Control
A reliable and secure system is vital, but how easy is it for those managing content, managing hardware, or managing a business’s total technology footprint to monitor a network? Digital signage applications can be anywhere and everywhere – and take many different forms. For many businesses, it’s likely that their digital signage network spans many locations, cities, buildings and more. The team managing and maintaining the health and performance of digital signage and content may not be in the same locations. This can spell trouble for on-premise applications that don’t have remote monitoring capabilities.
The solution? Conversations are shifting toward remote access and visibility for digital signage networks that bring new levels of control to operations. For example, from any location via the cloud, individuals in charge of managing solutions can get information about player and storage health, access real-time diagnostics, edit player properties to optimize performance, and even gather remote snapshots to see what is displayed on the screen. This gives key stakeholders the power to provision their network from any location, saving time and money on travel, while also increasing the efficiency of player management. This level of access is changing how businesses are thinking about digital signage control.
Make sure all stakeholders have a seat at the table
When deploying a digital signage application, it’s important to bring all parties to the table. Look beyond day one. Think about financial, operational and brand impact. Don’t just ask what success looks like — define what failure looks like, too.
Resilience means ensuring that digital signage remains operational and effective even in the face of hardware failures or software issues. To avoid poor experiences, businesses must engage in these conversations with their teams and partners. If they aren’t, it’s time to shift the narrative.
Courtesy / Brightsign
Jeff Hastings is the chief technology officer at BrightSign. Since founding BrightSign in 2009, he has focused on helping customers embrace technology to create immersive experiences. Jeff is dedicated to developing products and services that meet the needs of BrightSign’s global customers through unrivaled reliability, security, signage power, and sustainability.
