But, the bell-weather it strikes me relates to 2 other elements.

Integration of DS with back office operating applications (the one that are central to and drive business operations) such as point of sale, etc. will clearly emerging as common practice in food services faster than this practice in any other major market sector.

Second, success, empowered DS in food services is based fundamentally on data feeds and dynamic content provisioning… relevant content based on the specific viewer for revenue achievement. So paradigms and processes related to content strategy that come from food services will inform and improve content strategies at large.

Enterprise application integration and content are central to Dynamic signage growth and direction.

Thanks for the comment. I agree with your thoughts on the also-rans, and view the intermediate term prospects of their efforts to be quite gloomy. This is a knowledge-based business. Solutions trump gizmos. Gizmos that provide solutions have merit. But constant pressing of the price button is not a great strategy if you are in fact selling knowledge.

Thanks for the comment as well as the call we had. As we discussed on the phone, my central beef with your premise is that there are really not 300 or 600 candidates for any given opportunity. We do agree that there is a serious issue in the marketplace where legitimate buyers can become confused by the number of selling messages in the solution space, many emanating from empty suits and snake oil salesmen. I would suggest that if an independent party invested the time and money to do a deep dive on a dozen solutions, they would be in a position to provide real value to high value clients. As far as I know, none have bothered. Until then, call me a cynic.

Outstanding! Highly inspirational!

Larry

Brian

As I believe Ken has mentioned before however, realistically there are maybe a dozen vendors and products that can be taken seriously. In each vertical (corporate comms, ad serving, QSR, casino, hospitality, retail etc) it’s simple enough to name three or four that can scale, work properly, have a good number of existing customers for each ‘vertical’.

Back in the days of mainframes, many of the larger retailers wrote their own merchandising/inventory systems. As solution providers emerged, initially on the large scale platforms, and then rapidly as minicomputers and then client-server computing became the norm, nearly all migrated to packaged solutions. I suspect there are a few who wrote and continue to maintain their own code base, but I do not know of any offhand.

Ken

Do you know of any?

Whilst I am most definitely NOT a fan of exhibitions doing their own Awards many of your readers (and mine over on DailyDOOH) may have added #8 The Apex Awards to your list.

One other thing that I think DSE needs and I believe the organisers agree as they have been very supportive of our publishing efforts is to up the ante / be more professional with giveaways that can help push the industry forward. A #9 then could have been our recent book ‘ DOOH Insights: 2008 to 2012 Volume I DSE Special Edition’ given FREE (a) to all conference delegates, (b) the first hundred or so thru the door on the first day and (c) as you have kindly made mention of by twitter, in the Digital Signage Federation Booth #1607).

In terms of #10, DSE is one of the only shows we know of in our industry that has real buyers present. It’s not just tire kickers and channel partners. Real business gets done at this show.

I appreciate the comment, you are too kind. I’m not all that smart, but i do love the art of the deal! Have a great Holiday.

KG

We had a situation when a consultant insisted a certain piece of content software used on a computer from the software vendor rather than a networked media player. This resulted in an increase of 30% on the project costs for no real benefit for the client.

Graham

In this current day and age, people and competitors are keep to know when others fail and it seems the enjoy spreading the news of the failed project.

We have been in digital signage for the past 3 years and had our fail few failures but our success out weigh the fails and we have learned from them.

Graham

Thanks for the comment and kind words. I agree that as a consultant, reputation and integrity are of top importance. The first is earned by demonstrating the latter. Good thoughts

KG

Consultants need not necessarily be “independent” but certainly objective. With Preset, and with Pro-Motion, it’s in my best interest to prescribe the right platform for the situation. If I offer up a platform (or piece of hardware or anything else) that is not right for the client, it’s a potential lose-lose situation. I simply cannot afford to just offer up a preferred partner.

A good question for any buyer to ask of any company is who (if any) are a company’s preferred partners. If the company throws out names, that’s a red flag right there. That means you’re not getting an unbiased or objective answer.

No doubt you face this challenge coming from being a software provider (and a damn good one at that), yet at the end of the day, it’s critical that I maintain a 30,000 foot view of what is out there.

Kind of like a doctor – if I give you the wrong medicine, I’m in big trouble.

Key questions to add profesionalism to our industry (where everybody seems an expert)

Thanks

Excellent website and a nice share for the digital signage industry.

Graham

Just want to make sure your readers understand what CETW actually is, which is very different (and much more) than you described.

Thanks for the comment and clarifications. My intent was not to denigrate CETW, and I think you know that. My point, in one sentence (not an entire paragraph) was that CETW is not a digital signage event per se. Your clarification seems to confirm that. I was driving toward the idea that a *digital signage*-centric event in the Fall seems to be evolving before our eyes, and is likely to become more organized. That would not be a bad thing either for the digital signage folks OR for CETW. They would not conflict.

Thanks

KG

There is a major difference between that and how you describe the event. CETW is about integrated technologies for marketing and advertising campaigns. It is NOT focused on one technology or one type of technology, but rather on how to use the myriad of technologies available to brands and agencies to engage their customers.

I hope that clears things up, because the description as written above is incorrect. That is not CETW, but rather the way KioskCom was. CETW is much more, and shows that by the speakers and exhibitors we have – a bit of all the categories I mentioned above to truly show marketers how to use technology to engage customers and spur them to action

Thanks for the comment, and I think that you nailed it. While the last thing we need is another stacked awards ceremony, we could use a few more success stories… maybe even a few outside of our own trade press!

KG

Next, the sharing of failure is easy compared to sharing success. White papers and seminars on what works, what TRULY WORKS, are few and far between, because companies don’t want to share. Who wants to give up the secret sauce on success? Then others will do it. No one will give up that proprietary knowledge. Remember how amazing it was that Wal-Mart shared it’s end cap information?

However, you’re right to say that this are learning moments. I like to share “oops” moments. Because a) it’s okay to share what doesn’t work if b) it’s taken in perspective that these things happen.

What I would like to see is more success, more sharing of great deployments, more sharing of winning ROI formulas. Then the rising tide will lift all the boats.

Thanks for the comment and the insight on Cisco. I found myself nodding my head when you describe their need to make IT the decision maker to win. It turns out that IT is more of a facilitator or gatekeeper in most of the projects out there, rather than an owner.

KG

Their problem is with changing the customer buying entity to IT (ie, the “Cisco guys”).

Cisco’s success in new markets has been predicated on this; and thus your correct statement “…to be integrated into its existing…”. This worked with IBM/SNA networking, LANs, Y2K, Security, Telephony…but has not worked for digital signage, which still is the domain of advertising, marketing or other entity.

Cisco’s inability to move this brings about your statement on why “..they consistently get beat outside their sweet spot”. This looks like a timing issue, but it really is Cisco giving the IT guys the right reason and information to take this on (fight the battle for Cisco) and whoever is currently controlling the decision to give it up.

Cisco is not good at partnering (they are an acquisition company), and is so big they don’t depend on other companies to build the market, so the timing issue is all on them.

We find ourselves in a similar situation, as we advise clients of the most cost effective method to deploy a solution and they completely ignore your suggestions, spending thousands on solutions that do not have all the features as the solution we offered and in time the deployments are halted.

When will they listen?

G

There is a hybrid advertizing model in play when it comes to digital signage. Walmart forces its major brands to place ads on it’s network and many cinema operators (assume QSR and others also) get subsidies for their DS systems to promote brands that they are selling in-store. (ie Coke, Pepsi, Mars)

Thanks for joining the conversation. Your thoughts on the proliferation of screens in retail reminds of an old saying about sports referees… you don’t even notice the best ones, but you are glad they are there.

KG

Thanks for the comment… One thought that occurs to me is that the ad-based business will start to look a lot more like the corporate business if it doesn’t already. The big will get bigger, focused and more branded. Fun times coming, there won’t be any shortage of blog fuel!

KG