Guide: Choosing the Best Digital Signage Software for Your Workplace

 Digital signage software is a powerful tool for enhancing communication within businesses, improving employee engagement, and boosting workplace well-being. When selecting the right digital signage software for your organisation, it is crucial to consider certain factors. In this post, we will discuss six essential factors that you need to consider when choosing the right digital signage software. But before that, let’s take a closer look at digital signage, its benefits, and how it works.

What is digital signage?

Digital signage, also known as electronic signage, is a technology that displays information on digital screens. It can be used in various settings such as warehouses, schools, manufacturing sites, retail stores, hotels, restaurants, corporate buildings, and more.

How does digital signage work?

To select the best digital signage for your office, it is essential to understand its components. There are two main components of any digital signage solution:

1. Hardware: You will need a display screen and a digital signage player to show content.
2. Software: The software you choose determines what kind of media is displayed and delivers content to your digital signage screen.

What are the benefits of digital signage software?

Digital signage software has become an increasingly popular internal communication tool in many workplaces due to its advantages, including:

• Grabs Attention: Digital signage screens show videos, live feeds, infotainment content, and more, making it easier to grab employees’ attention.
• Doesn’t Distract or Annoy: Digital signage screens serve as an ambient channel, which means they do not disturb the workforce with annoying pop-ups or spam the inbox.
• Unifies Messaging: Digital signage screens provide a single source of truth for sharing the same message across the workforce, ensuring that no one gets confused.
• Connects Frontline Teams: Digital signage screens allow frontline and non-desk staff to view the same messages, even when they are not in the office, which can help them feel more connected to the rest of the organisation.When choosing digital signage software, consider these factors to ensure that you select the best solution for your organisation.

6 Factors to consider when choosing the right digital signage software

1. Determine your business objectives

Before choosing a digital signage software, it’s important to decide what you want to achieve with it. Digital signage can be used to showcase leadership teams, display performance results, promote workplace wellness messaging, and more. Identifying your objectives will help you focus on the features that matter most to your business.

2. Decide what type of content you want to display

Next, you need to know what type of content you want to show on screen. Most digital signage software will allow text, images and video. Digital signage content can be as complex as you need it to be. Depending on which software you choose, you may need to work with graphic designers. The best digital signage solutions will have built-in templates to bring your content to life. When it comes to wording, just be sure to keep your messages short. People tend to lose focus when faced with a huge chunk of text on screen.

3. Make a list of must-have features and functionality

Make a list of all the features you need. This will ensure you choose the software that suits your business-specific criteria. Here are some must-have digital signage features to consider: Content management system. A digital signage content management system (CMS) is where you go to create and update your content and schedule the rotations of different playlists on each of your screens.

Content scheduling. This is the ability to schedule content ahead of time – even better if you can set repeating schedules too Integration capabilities. You can minimise doubling up work to replicate content on your digital signage screens if it can pull data from your existing workplace apps and tools you already use, such as SharePoint or social media sites.

Can monitor digital screen connectivity. You’ll want to be notified as soon as a screen is unexpectedly switched off or disconnected so you can get it up and running again Supports remote use. A cloud-based digital signage software will allow you to simply log in on a browser and make all the changes you need and create content, from wherever you are.

Supports different types of content. You can display a range of content types on your digital signage screens: text, images, video and audio. The right software will make it easy for you to share different types of content on all your screens. Scalable. Digital signage software should be able to cope with many screens connected to the network.

4. Determine the location of your screens

The location of your screens will affect your hardware choices. If the screens will be outdoors, you may need a commercial TV and an industrial media player that can withstand environmental factors such as dust and moisture. If the screens will be mounted indoors, a monitor with an in-built media player may suffice.

5. Choose the right hardware

There are two main parts to digital signage hardware: a display screen and a media device. There are many types of digital signage screens to choose from:

• Commercial TVs Smart TVs
• Non-smart TV (not internet-enabled)
• Monitors
• Tablets

The best digital signage screens are those with System on Chip (SoC) technology. Effectively, it gets rid of a media player because the screen already comes with it built in. There are many benefits to SoC screens: No need to purchase an external player Reduced cabling requirements, speeding up installation time Easier to mount Fewer points of failure than media players (e.g. maintenance call outs) Brands such as LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, and more have released SoC screens and this technology is only going to improve with time.

6. Choose the right digital signage software vendor

Now that you’ve decided what the digital screens are for, where they’ll be placed and what kind of content you want to share, it’s time to choose the right software provider.

Aligns with your organisation’s needs

A lot of industries use digital signage so pick a vendor that caters to your needs. For example, Vibe caters to enterprises with a mix of office and deskless workers. Look into what features the digital signage software provider offers, sign up for a demo or free trial, read case studies and make an informed decision.

It’s easy to use

Ease of use is very important to the success of your digital signage solution. If it’s not easy for non-technical people to manage the content on screen, then the content on the digital signage screens won’t get updated content, or it will end up being a burden for the IT team to manage.

Sets you up for success with the right features

Digital signage solutions should offer more than just a way to show your messages on screen. Our solution prides itself on transforming workplace communications with game-changing efficiency. Our solution offers an extensive slide template library that has a Snackable Learning Framework© built into each slide to cut the time and effort needed to produce engaging content so you can focus on crafting high-value messages, not formatting slides.

Has an appropriate level of customer support

When you run into problems, you’ll want the right level of support to help you troubleshoot issues. The “right” level will vary – if you or the software users are savvy enough to only rely on help documentation, that’s fine. But if you anticipate that you’ll need more help, make sure the vendor can cater to the level of support your business needs.

Has a free trial

It can be daunting to start paying for your software before trialling all the features to make sure it’ll meet your needs. You should expect to be able to test run the software before subscribing to it.

Is secure

You want to work in a secure environment so check if what data security certification your vendor has. If you’re part of a large organisation, having a certified data secure vendor might be one of the requirements set by your IT team.

In summary

Digital signage software can make a huge difference in employee engagement and workplace wellbeing. Once you’ve determined business-specific objectives, the right digital signage software will help you efficiently share important top-down communications that reach your entire workforce.

Digital signage screens are just one way to sharing high-value top-down messages to the workforce. If you’re looking for more communication channels that aren’t intrusive (like pop-up notifications), consider adding corporate screensavers and setting a default home page on the web browser.

New Era Technology can help your company find the best digital signage solution suited to your needs by offering a range of services including consultation, installation, and ongoing support. We work with you to understand your specific business objectives and provide tailored recommendations on the most effective hardware and software solutions. Contact us to learn more.

Information for this blog sourced from vibe.fyi