When starting your search for digital signage, follow these three steps to make sure it is compatible with your organization’s communication systems.

1. 3 Simple Steps for Sourcing
Workplace Digital Signage

2. If you’re like most
buyers of workplace
digital signage (DS), the
reason you need it is to
create the ability to
communicate your
company’s critical issues
to your employees.

3. …Which begs the question: How do you easily get all the information from
your desk, computer and enterprise systems and into the DS?

4. First, let’s identify the typical information you want to communicate.
Here are the four main content categories and examples of each:

5. Corporate news: CEO videos, stock price, new TV ads.

6. HR
information:
Employee of the
month, service
anniversaries,
401k updates,
medical insurance
news and health &
wellness info.

7. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
Production and
shipping data
Cost reduction
progress
Revenue
Improvement
Customer satisfaction
metrics

8. Situational awareness: Days/hours worked since last
accident, local traffic & weather, today’s lunch menu.

9. Identifying what you want to communicate is a good first
step, but there is an equally important consideration…

10. …Which is identifying the format
the data is currently in.

11. For example, KPIs may currently be in spreadsheets on your
desktop, or in a database on your ERP system.
VS

12. VS
Your company stock price may come from an internal data feed
or you may want to use a web-based source like CNBC or Yahoo
Finance.

13. An employee of the month piece might be a PowerPoint document or a
jpeg. The different type of format can make a big difference in your DS
selection.

14. The bottom line here is that it’s important not to get the
content strategy mixed up with the system strategy.

15. You can make this easy by following
these three steps when looking for DS:

16. 1. Define your
communication
objectives.

17. 2. Identify the content your
company currently
produces and any outside
collateral you want to use
(web, agency-produced, etc.)
that supports those
objectives.

18. 3. Slice and dice items
1&2 by type of content.
For example, web-based,
Microsoft Office,
company databases, etc.

19. Once you have
answers to this
short list,
particularly #3,
you will have a
good basis to
start your DS
search by
making sure the
final choice
handles most of
your formats
quickly and
easily.

20. http://www.themarlincompany.com/products/digital-signage | P: 800.344.5901 | E: info@themarlincompany.com