How to Improve Your Digital Signage ROI without Increasing Your Costs

Digital signage is becoming the norm for many Australian organisations. And many shell out big money for these solutions, expecting a solid return on their investment.

Unfortunately, their results don’t always match their expectations, and their actual ROI and performance can be underwhelming. If your digital signage results have been less-than-stellar, here’s how to handle common frustrations – including opportunities for turning your performance around at little-to-no extra cost.

Failing Technology

Perhaps understandably, failing technology is one of the biggest factors driving the underperformance experienced by many organisations when it comes to their digital screens. Maybe their current displays are failing too frequently because they’re out of warranty. It’s also possible that they’re using inexpensive consumer-grade screens that can’t handle the demand of commercial-use settings.

In any case, performance issues resulting from failing technology drive down the overall ROI of these screens, thanks to unanticipated downtime and higher-than-expected repair costs.

Lacklustre Support

Hardware and software have limited lifespans. Digital screens, media players and other types of technology should be expected to require repair or replacement over time. That said, the quality of the support you receive can have a major impact on the lifetime cost of your technology.

Whilst it seems like every vendor offers 24/7/365 customer support these days, make sure you understand what you’re actually getting. For starters, many organisations find that round-the-clock service isn’t truly that important – often, they prefer to receive support during the hours their stores or offices are open. Instead, what really matters is the strength of the SLAs offered by the vendor, the costs associated with receiving support, and the quality of the service received.

Weak SLAs that don’t guarantee support in a timely manner can impact performance if vendors take forever to fix broken equipment. At the same time, contracts that dictate excessively high support costs can cause organisations to run up exceptionally high, ROI-minimising expenses – or worse, forgo necessary maintenance that, in turn, further shortens the lifespan of their technology.

Finally, consider support quality. When businesses receive sub-par support that lacks an expert touch, errors made on the part of unskilled technicians can also contribute to the premature wear – or even failure – of their digital screen systems.

Underperforming Content

Even if an organisation has the best screens in the world and the highest quality support SLAs on the market, underperforming content or a poorly designed content strategy will ruin their digital signage ROI every time.

An inadequate content management system (CMS) can also create friction. For example, companies may have selected their CMS prior to the boom in cloud solutions and are now stuck with non-cloud products that offer limited functionality. They may even be in a position where their current vendor is closing their doors, and there’s simply no way to upgrade the existing version of their CMS.

Upgrading Your Digital Signage Solution

Whatever the case may be, finding yourself in any of these situations is a clear sign that it’s time for a change. However, improving the performance of your digital signage doesn’t necessarily mean going out and purchasing expensive new screens. Instead, a change in your vendor or content strategy may be enough to drive greater performance from your digital signage, without increasing your costs.

For example, take Engagis’s media players and CMS. Our scale allows us to make this technology so affordable that we’re often able to put new media players on our clients’ screens – without upping their existing operating costs – by offering them on lease.

Or, take our support SLAs. It’s important to look at the bigger picture. If your organisation is spending more on customer service than you expected – perhaps due to under-skilled support workers or more-frequent-than-expected service calls – our industry-leading SLAs may actually reduce your overall digital signage expenses.

Engagis’ Migration Process

Transitioning to Engagis for your digital signage needs doesn’t have to be complex. Our proven migration process is designed to suit the needs of a wide range of Australian organisations, across multiple industries, reducing your risk of change, lowering the costs of your service transitions, and giving you a better digital signage experience overall.

Our goal is to enable you to make a seamless transition without having to worry about set up, installation or ongoing maintenance. That’s why we often run small-scale pilots on new clients’ existing digital signage networks. Leveraging our in-built analytics and performance measurement capabilities, we can clearly quantify the specific benefits a possible transition will have for your organisation.

To date, the team at Engagis has migrated the digital signage of thousands of stores, and we’ve helped leading Australian organisations like Suncorp and Australia Post take their display networks to the next level.

If you’re less than satisfied with your current digital signage provider, we’d love to help you upgrade. Contact the Engagis team now for suggestions on how to get the most from your network through cost-effective migrations.