The 25 gotchas of digital signage, part 4

Mike White, president, Multi-Media Solutions

Throughout the years, Multi-Media Solutions has seen its fair share of easy and troublesome digital signage deployments. But through it all we persevered and learned from all the experiences, which ultimately proved to be more important than any profit from any specific job. 

Below is a list of our most memorable (and painful) mistakes, numbers 16 through 20 of the 25 gotchas of digital signage.

16) What can you be charged for? On one job, we had multiple projectors blended into one large image and like many projects, we had to install the projects while other parts of the building were being completed, One of the projectors, because of the dust, had to be repaired. Guess who had to pay big bucks for an emergency rental of a spare projector? You get the idea. This should have never been the integrator's liability.

17) Impact of distance installations Seek and find local contractors that you can call on when emergencies happen. If you don't have some organization you will end up with very expensive flights to locations and all sorts of extra expenses that you never considered. It is worth paying another company to come in before you finish the job and familiarize them with the location and top-level layout of the system.

18) Backups You would be surprised, but most high-end digital signage projects don't have adequate backup systems. Build it into your budget and tell your customer that this is a required insurance policy.

19) First-time configurations We have grossly underestimated integration of many new products into our digital signage networks. My strongest caution is to build contingency into your budget if you have a project where you are using several new components. This is especially true if you are running software that you have never used.

20) Train who and how many times? You've finished the product and you think you have seen the worst, but if you have not defined up front who you are going to train and their competency, you are about to experience a very costly "gotcha."