Disneyland for grown ups. As the flight was about to land at Vegas, my co-passenger from Japan shared an interesting insight. “Las Vegas is the Disneyland for grown ups”. After the experience in the expo and the city that never sleeps, I understand completely what he meant. I represented our company, Niche Softek in the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas in Feb 2008. Niche was one of the two Indian Companies participating in the Expo. The venue at Las Vegas could not be better. In the city that is always ringing with casino games and bustling with conventions, it was fun to have the expo in this place. The day before the expo, the organizers had arranged for a tour to take participants around vegas to see some of the installations done by participating companies. Visiting 5 casinos in 3 hours (and not spending much on gambling!) was quite and experience. Implementations ranged from interactive touch screens to large walls powered by data projectors to huge LED signs that are visible all over Vegas. This was a well attended show with over 3000 visitors to the expo halls. The next years show is slated to be even better, with even more companies planning participation. This year’s exhibition participation was the key to turn our strategic direction over its head. We decided to transform into an “effective communications solution provider” from a “digital signage technology vendor”…

Get away from the crowd. Less than a third of the total 150 booths in the expo showcased some software solution or the other. Some ranged from very basic to the industry leaders like Scala, Broadsign etc. A very conservative guess could be that the digital signage market is adding a couple of software solutions companies globally every week!. We could sense the crowd that we were a part. Our resolve to quickly differentiate ourselves from the software provider space was firm.

Delivering value centric AND cost conscious solutions. We basically had 2 kind of visitors to the stall. Some were interesting in real high end large networks and some in low cost offerings from the software factory of the world – India. We realized it would be quite a challenge to position us in the value based and cost driven markets at the same time. We instantly decided to changed our range of offerings and positioning. We now deliver solutions from sub 25 dollars upwards (with no upper limit!). The idea is to offer a solution that fits any marketing communications need, budget and deployment plan.

Become Interactive asap. In matured markets, Customers are now looking for something beyond the looping digital signage displays. Some companies like Naonation showcased interactive solutions based on device interactivity like custom kiosks, interfacing itouch apple devices to the digital signage and so on. These are powerful engagement methods for customers as it allows them to spend more time and become receptive to the message. interactivity now extends beyond just touch screens. It means getting a variety of devices like cell phones, Bluetooth, RF Ids etc. interfaced to the signage. We decided to extend and expand our offerings to offer virtually any kind of software and hardware interface that could enable interactivity.

One manager software, any player Integration. Our booth was visited by a number of hardware and software vendors like specialty player mfgs, specialty LCD mfgs etc. who were very keen to promote their hardware as a part of turnkey solutions that we provided. This was a good insight into what the world has to offer on the signage. Looking around, we realized that the standard features of a manager software were pretty well covered by most vendors. What was missing was the solutions approach with most manager software from other vendors. We are now opening up our manager architecture to work with any player hardware. One manager, multiple players (from multiple vendors) will soon be a reality.

Extend to multiple cultures and languages. In India, we design software and its features as though it is going to be only used by English language users. Users from Gulf, China etc. have special scripting and right-left and up-down scripting sequences. Realizing that limiting ourselves only to English would restrict our global deployment model, We are quickly enhancing the software to be compatible to multiple languages to extend its potential reach.
Extend to multiple cultures and languages. In India, we design software and its features as though it is going to be only used by English language users. Users from Gulf, China etc. have special scripting and right-left and up-down scripting sequences. Realizing that limiting ourselves only to English would restrict our global deployment model, We are quickly enhancing the software to be compatible to multiple languages to extend its potential reach.

Hosted Model: Model of the future. We saw a few hosted models. Some are for running small signage networks, some are captive for running quite large networks. We could not locate any focused on solutions. Our earlier idea of the hosted model was driven by the need for rapid expansion beyond the geographies. The idea was to create something that is the best in class network manager. Something very extensive in its features and not just a vanialla drag and drop software that are hosted (some times free) by some vendors. We are tuning our model on its head to offer a full featured hosted anager with a downloaded player by May 08.

Partnering the key: In India, the approach usually is do it all. In the US, as the market has matured and it requires deep pockets to setup your own shop. The whole eco-system is designed for partners make bring value and make margins on sales and generate after sales services to the customer. We figured this could only be done using a hosted model. The system integrators would then sign up their customers and manage their networks directly without involving us. This furthered our commitment to launch our own hosted model by May 08 and sign up systems integrators globally in our partnership program.

Discovery of the Digital Signage framework. The idea of empowering systems integrators was firmly in place. We needed to build a solutions framework which they could easily use and build solutions on. We then started making a list of the various solution framework components we had like interfaces, network variants etc to build these solutions and realized we had already got 100+ of them. With this wide range of framework components, we realized, there are a lot many solutions we are deployed, designed or ideated… lets list them down as reference solutions…Systems integrators would be able to refer to a solution, use necessary framework components, add their own and bring value to the customer. Streme was quickly enhanced to a solutions framework rather than just a software.

Global marketing needs far more dollars than you think... We met a couple of consultants who helped us guage the potential of US market. They also helped us outline a strategic plan to for investing into building a system integrator partner network. On probing further with meetings and calls, to get a feel of what it would take financially to do this, it turned out to be a an investment of a few million dollars for a serious attempt. We also identified some process, features, training and documentation requirements to make Streme ready for global deployment. This reconfirmed our commitment for seeking funding to expand overseas and being very selective in the geographies we go to. Our senior management team has begun its search for a partner who would have the same passion for the business as we do to take this ahead at a global level.

Effective communication, going beyond just digital signage… We could hardly see any company offering a complete range of solutions from a small installation to a large hosted model. We could see very few with expertise on integrating various devices and embedding themselves right into the retail experience. Most had architecture limitations or had capability limitations or simply did not have the will to go further and expand their portfolio. When we stared counting the number of specific business solutions we had, I guessed it was around 40. At the last count, yesterday, we were at 92 for 12 industry verticals and still counting… We now have a range of solutions that make immediate business sense to a marketing team looking to differentiate its communication.

The future. For the next years expo, we have expressed interest in participating again.. We see the interactive space exploding with growth in the near future. The idea is to look around more and learn, interact and participate in the seminars to get more insights we can share with all readers…