What's the difference?
If you’re a manager looking to improve communications within your company, you may think that pretty much any digital signage (DS) will get the job done. And it probably will work.
Sort of.
That’s because DS can be used – very effectively – for workplace communications, but it can also be used for many other things. For example, these days DS is widely used in restaurants for menu boards, in airports for flight schedules, and in retail stores to display sales and special promotions. You might think that one well-designed DS system would be effective at all of these applications, but you’d be wrong.
Think about it: don’t you want the product you buy to be designed for your particlular application? Take vehicles as an example. Let’s say you run a health care company and you need to transport patients from one facility to another on a regular basis. Would you buy a panel, or maybe a pickup truck? They would work… but of course you wouldn’t do that. You’d buy an ambulance. In other words, you’d get a product that was specifically designed for the task at hand.
Or take something as prosaic as tape. We all have a roll of Scotch tape hanging around, and it works great for wrapping birthday presents, sealing envelopes and the like. But if you were painting you kitchen you wouldn’t use it to keep paint off the molding. Or if you cut your finger, you wouldn’t use it for holding on a bandage. While it would technically work in either case, masking and adhesive tape work much, much better.
A workplace communication DS requirement is no different; you should find a system that is specifically designed for your task. Yes, you could get a system designed for retail advertising to work eventually, but why do that when there are products specifically designed for exactly what you’re trying to do?
It’s all about the software and content, not the hardware. It’s a common mistake to go out shopping for the hardware first and think about the actual functioning part later. If you’re in the market for workplace DS, do yourself a favor and find a product that was designed from the ground up to help you achieve your communication objectives.
