So you have decided to look at incorporating digital signage into your business. Do you know how you are going to do it?
Today?s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President and COO at SafeSourcing. Mark asks
With the decreased cost and increased value of digital signage, companies are beginning to look more closely at these solutions for their business.? Whether they are simply building upon their brand or doing that in conjunction with offering public information, advertising, or enhancing the customer experience in the business or store location, many companies have already developed some strategies and allocated budgets for this category for 2013.? Today we are going to be touching on some of those areas that you will need to armed with in developing how you gather the information to make your final decisions.
The features ? Buying or renting; internal or external; bundled or itemized; content management or no content management.? These are all great examples of the choices you will have to make when determining your final solution.? How much of the features you know will determine the number of vendors you look at and the depth (i.e. Request For Information as opposed to Request For Proposal) of the information you begin collecting.? Vendors can tell exactly where you are in the decision making process by the complexity of the information request and scope you provide them.? The more you lock down the request, the more likely the responses will be returned in a format to efficiently evaluate.
The responses ? The responses you receive from the Request For Information or Proposal will be tied directly to the details and structure you provide the vendors.? If you know that you have a specific set of criteria that needs to be met in order to be considered then fashion your request in a manner that asks the vendors to structure the information about their companies and solutions in the format you want.? If you know that you want a reputable company who has experience in your industry and has performed projects for companies your size then make sure you have requested that information from them and not focused on questions that will have no bearing in your decision making process.? If there are specific features and service levels you expect, make sure you collect the capability to meet those expectations in a way that will be easy to evaluate at the end.
The pricing ? While the price is not the most important piece of any project it is a piece that needs to be collected in order to evaluate where every supplier falls.? If someone is providing you unmatched value add services it is critical that you understand where the supplier falls from a price perspective.?? Suppliers vary, and some can vary widely from each other.? Requesting item level detail at this stage is good even if you plan to bundle them later for discounting reasons.? Collect everything including add-on services you may or may not need later.? If there are start-up costs, training, annual maintenance costs, or content creation service fees, make sure you know what each vendor charges and if they can provide the services you need.
Digital Signage is an up-and-coming area for businesses but knowing what you want will be critical to evaluating the potential partners in the most complete way.?? For more information about how we can assist you in this process, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.? We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.
We look forward to your comments.
