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Finding the keys to a successful CMS

Just as there are many types of displays on the market, there are also a wide variety of content management systems. Picking the right CMS for your business is crucial for long term success with digital signage.

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June 4, 2019 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator

Just as there are many types of displays on the market, there are also a wide variety of content management systems. Picking the right CMS for your business is crucial for long term success with digital signage.

When comparing CMS solutions, end users should think about these three words: simple, scalable and flexible.

Simple

The best CMS in the world will fail if it is too complex for end users to grasp. 

"As corporate IT departments are being asked to integrate more complex digital signage application it is important for the CMS to not limit the creativity and functionality of those displays," Daniel Griffin, VP, marketing, Userful Corp., said in an interview. "Everything should be easy to understand and implement, eliminating the unnecessary complexities."

Scalable

Many companies looking to use digital signage aren't just deploying one display or even to one location. If a CMS isn't able to handle a large number of displays and locations, it will quickly become a major problem.

Nick Thrasher, media specialist of the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation based in Pensacola, Florida, said that prior to installing a better CMS, it took a lot of "man-hours to maintain our very standard looking displays."

Griffin said that modern CMS should be able to, "scale to an unlimited number of displays and sources in any layout on a single platform."

In order to ensure this, Griffin also recommends that a CMS should support all "visual display application requirements," and it should feature centralized management and software that operates across the entire network.

Flexible

A successful CMS needs to be flexible so it can handle a variety of needs, such as different resolutions, systems and other requirements.

"Systems that only supports video in standard aspect ratios and orientations are useless today. A CMS needs to support ever increasing resolution demands and allow for the creation of unique immersive video experiences — using video walls and other synchronized displays that support a variety of sources and inputs for display across screens without proprietary hardware," Griffin said.

An example of a flexible CMS would be one that would allow pre-caching content, so users can continue to deliver fresh content, even if there is an internet outage. End users can also use this feature to deliver dynamic content that responds to customer demographics or moods.

The ultimate goal of a good CMS is to be able to deliver content quickly and efficiently.

"Solutions should be able to deliver any source anytime, anywhere across an enterprise," Griffin said.

About Bradley Cooper

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Bradley Cooper is the editor of ATM Marketplace and Food Truck Operator. He was previously the editor of Digital Signage Today. His background is in information technology, advertising, and writing.

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