How do you make your digital signage future-proof?

When you are starting with digital signage many choices have to be made. And since you are in it for the long run, you have to make sure that you deploy a well-designed, purposeful, secure, cost-effective and future-proof system that will serve your organization for many years. Here are four tips that you can take to heart to future-proof your digital signage project.

1. Follow trends and talk about it

Without good content, even the most expensive display in the world is useless. If you want to keep your display effective for a long time, you need a good content strategy. Our advice is to keep evolving your signage content strategy by keeping your eyes open to new trends. Look at how other companies are using digital signage, regardless of the industry. This will open up your mind for new insights and help you to think outside the box. Talk about your findings, the things that caught your attention. Explore how these new trends can be used within your organization. Try to see where you want be with digital signage at least five years ahead. Data-driven content and data analytics are getting more and more important in digital signage. Therefore, it’s good to talk about those aspects when you are creating your strategy and making choices. Read more about it in the blog How data driven content is shaping the future of digital signage.

2. Explore the ability to add new technologies

Being future-proof is also about the ability to add, or use new technologies. Something that you don’t need right now but can be convenient in the future. So when you talk about being data-driven, the technology to support that needs to be covered with the software and the hardware needs to be able to handle it. 

Automation and interactivity are themes that you see more and more in the digital signage landscape. And while you may just want to replace your posters with signage, you can take your signage to the next level with technologies such as conditional scheduling and lift and learn solutions using sensors, just to name a few. MagicINFO offers some really great out of the box futuristic features, like Ruleset and it has a very extensive API that opens many doors to bring in new stuff.

3. Choose long lasting hardware

If you are looking for durability and longevity you need commercial displays. They are equipped with the right technology and features where you can benefit from for years to come. So these are already future-proof just because of that! But there are more things to consider making sure your choice to be future-proof. Like, how easy can you add new displays? And is the system still running smoothly and up to date when you do so? A signage system is as strong as its weakest point. So when you have just one older display that doesn't meet up with the newest technologies this can affect the system as a whole.

The built-in hardware technologies are very important. It needs to speak the same language as the software in order to make use of all features.  This is just one of the reasons why we are convinced that Samsung devices and the MagicINFO software is such a powerful combination. Because the development of the technology goes hand in hand. Next to this Samsungs’ TizenOS, the open source, all-in-one solution embedded in Samsung’s smart signage, allows to create software directly on the displays through the integrated media player. So, whatever your signage goal is, now or in the future, combining Samsung hardware with the TizenOS and the MagicINFO player will make it happen! 

4. Right partnership

We cannot ignore it, if you want a long-term successful signage project, you must have a clear picture of what you want to achieve. Talking about it within your organization is an important step, but also sharing your ideas with other peers and experts is a good thing to do. Especially when you want your project to be future-proof. Talking about your project with experts is just what your project needs. They can ask yourself the right questions and bring in ideas based on years of experience with other signage projects. 

It will help you during your decision-making and provide an easy and smooth start of your signage project. And that’s just what you need, in order to make it future-proof,  because no one wants a project that is just simmering on and so miserable that you actually want to pull the plug right away. Now, that’s not future-proof at all.

Want to talk about how you can future-proof your signage project? We are happy to share thoughts, just schedule a meeting with on of our consultants right away.

Interested in more reading about how to successfully start a signage project, make sure to download this ebook 9 Practical step to get started with Digital signage.