This week I've been involved with change management consulting for a growing services group.
Their challenge, much like any organisation, is how do they make sure that they keep and nurture their staff so that the good ones can progress to be future leaders.
To me, this is a real business challenge. Often in organisations, business challenges are pushed aside when the solution is seen as a piece of technology.
In my industry the tools of choice are websites, portals and digital signage, but these will not solve the problems on their own.
A recent communication with Jacqueline Landers led me to think about how my customers use the tools to meet their business needs.
In the early days: lets go back 10 years
We used to turn up to organisations and the AV consultant would have just been and installed a plasma screen and PC. When the customer was asked what do we now do with it, the stock answer was "dunno, er, just show powerpoint on it"
This aproach really was a symptom of the distribution model for hardware. AV box shifters rarely understood business needs and just sold and installed.
Fast forward to the current day and business leaders wishing to communicate with staff and encourage leadership are told by IT, "dunno, er, just put a sharepoint in". Again this is because of the influence of the distributor (in this case Microsoft) who just want to shift box (albeit software). By shift box, here I mean sell multiple units.
How this relates to the current corporate digital signage market
There are a mix of options available to business leaders today.
Management / Content creation
- Outsource and get an agency to manage an organisations digital signage.
- Manage digital signage internally
Purchase
- Buy the software and hardware
- Rent or software as a service
Always we've been able to work with a customer in mixing in house content with externally sourced. For corporate digital signage, there has to be local control, but the business owner doesn't want to get technical, so a range of support services can be provided ot make it run smoothly.
From a purchase of equipment perspective we've seen a shift towards software as a service combined with lease purchase for hardware. In other words a simple monthly all in figure which is predictable and easy to swallow.
Understanding your customers perspective can really help make the difference between a dog of a project which no one wants to use against a smooth well oiled machine of a communications system.
To put it another way, communication is key in the early stage.
To discuss your workplace digital signage strategy, contact Mark N Hopgood -
cds@hopgood.eu
