What Retailers Underestimate About Managing Digital Estates at Scale

Most retailers underestimate the amount of ongoing operational work involved in running a large estate of digital screens. From guaranteeing that a qualified person is on hand to make changes and fix issues quickly to managing and mitigating potential security issues, there’s no doubt that retailers can fall into the trap of installing digital signage without the correct supporting infrastructure in place. 

Whilst screens are often assumed to be ‘all the same’, there’s a lot going on under the hood that differentiates the best from the worst . Decisions made at the point of procurement that have far larger long-term impacts than the up-front price alone. To stand the best chance of long-term success and ROI, retailers need to choose their hardware, software and support options with the same level of care and discernment that their customers show while they fill their baskets. 

Those who get that initial investment wrong risk poor reliability, lost advertiser revenue, security issues and the financial and reputational consequences. That’s why it’s essential to understand the operational and financial realities involved in running a large-scale digital screen estate, so that your procurement, property and IT teams ensure right from the start that the system you install is ideal for you. 

So, what should retailers be mindful of when investing and scaling digital media estates? Nikk Smith, Sales Director at Pixel Inspiration, breaks down the key elements that retailers commonly underestimate when it comes to digital signage and in-store retail media. 

Be prepared for the level of support you will need

One of the most commonly underestimated aspects of installing digital estates at scale in retail is just how much activity is required to detect, identify, troubleshoot and fix problems across a widely deployed estate. 

It’s worth bearing in mind that a typical store may be home to many different types of AV technology. That’s because the hardware must be dictated by the customer journey and the physical spaces that it allows, never the other way round. As a result of this, a large digital media estate tends to be more heterogenous and therefore more complex to support and service than a similarly sized but more homogenous IT deployment.

It’s quite common for digital media assets to be installed in retail spaces without a robust support service behind their operation, often because the hardware is procured through different channels to the associated support services. This is not helped by some suppliers in the ecosystem claiming to offer support as part of their hardware or software offering, which simply cannot be provided to the level required to operate a professional, commercialised network in a retail setting, where time is of the essence and access to equipment tends to be outside of business hours. 

As a result of this oversight, when screens stop working, no one knows where to go to get them fixed and, even if they do, the company on the end of the call has no obligation to fix things quickly to agreed standards.  All too often, this comes as a nasty surprise to companies who have invested heavily in their new equipment, without consideration to its long-term operation. 

Where do things go wrong – and what are the consequences?

The most common failure point in a digital screen estate is the connectivity between a display and its cloud controller, often because media assets in store are classed as non-business critical, unlike transactional systems. While most current signage software is designed to keep working during network outages, when network connectivity drops, the content on display is cached rather than live, so elements such as pricing and offers can get out of synch and new campaigns are unable to go live. 

In almost all cases, store staff will not realise there is an issue, as the screens continue to play content. The solution, of course, is for proactive monitoring of the estate; actively looking for problems and automatically investigating the cause in collaboration with the provider of connectivity and facilities management. 

Whilst a drop in connectivity may appear to be relatively small issue, the financial impact of a loss in connection can be considerable, especially for retailers who have large, monetised digital estates (in-store retail media). Should even a small proportion of a network like this go offline, it can lead to a failure to deliver the forecasted/sold impressions, potentially breaking contractual terms with brands and advertisers, degrading the trust in the retailer’s media and causing spend to go elsewhere. 

The firmware issue – why it matters

Another aspect that is often overlooked is the impact display firmware can have when not managed correctly. Most non-IT senior managers in a retailer won’t know exactly what firmware is, which means maintaining and upgrading this is unlikely to be on their priority list when sourcing support services. 

In simple terms, firmware is the software built permanently into a hardware device. It acts as a bridge between a system’s physical components and the software it works with. In the case of digital screens, it’s the System on Chip operating system that most content and remote management systems sit atop.  Like all software, firmware is subject to bugs of varying significance, most of which have no direct impact on the ability of a screen to display content. Instead bugs in firmware can often introduce more fundamental but invisible problems relating to network security and performance.  

It’s therefore essential that your firmware is managed, monitored and protected carefully. Failing to do so can have severe security repercussions which will inevitably impact the reliability, security and operation of the screens across the entirety of the estate, and potentially other systems that coexist on the same network. 

If firmware should be compromised by cyber attackers, this can lead to a whole host of issues, including display downtime, content manipulation and malware infection. 

The solution to this is to ensure that the display’s unseen aspects are proactively managed to the same level of detail as the content that’s running on them. Involve your IT department in discussions - they’ll be much more familiar with the strategies and techniques that need to be used to cover this part of the puzzle, and will be able to evaluate any solutions that your service provider is able to offer.  If your service provider doesn’t have an answer to the question, look for one that does!

Power consumption and sustainability

Sustainability is a key priority for modern businesses of all sizes. The implementation of a large-scale digital screen estate can have a significant impact on a retailer’s scope 2 emissions.  

Efficiency costs money in the electrical world, so you typically find that more expensive displays use less power for the same performance. In specification terms, manufacturers generally quote maximum and typical power use figures, but there’s no standard for comparisons with peers. This is where the issue lies – one manufacturer’s approach to labelling vs another’s may not be the same.  Unlike consumer TVs, as yet there are no energy compliance and labelling regulations for commercial displays. This means that manufacturers can use whatever stats they like to out-punch their competitors on paper. 

If a manufacturer bases their figures on energy-saving out of the box settings, using ambient light sensors and local dimming, you’ll naturally see a lower ‘typical’ use figure, but in the real world, those out of the box settings are probably not going to be what you’ll want to use for a commercial digital signage network. For starters, you can’t really turn off the SOC processor out of trading hours, as this will negate your ability to apply updates and content. You’ll probably also not be so happy with the vibrancy of the default picture when the display is installed in a brightly lit retail setting. 

This is not to say that the specs are useless – they should simply be treated as a starting point and, ideally, measured in a real world setting before committing to purchase. In our own testing, we find a definite correlation between the relative performance quoted by the big-brand manufacturers, but the exact figures are not the same as those given in the specifications, which can make a hundreds of thousands of pounds’ difference to your total cost of ownership calculations over 5 years.

Advice for procurement

There are several things that procurements should be mindful of, which will help negate potential long-term issues:

• Don’t focus solely on the picture: There is a tendency to procure against mainly the visible elements of a screen network, such as the size of screens, their resolution and brightness. It’s essential to give serious thought to the operational parts of a package that will be key to a network’s success. These include the CMS software capabilities; the support SLAs behind every aspect of operation; the level of remote firmware/hardware management available; the commitment from manufacturers to long-term patching of their firmware; and the real-world power efficiency of the solutions involved. 

• Warranty: A five-year warranty can mean confident depreciation over that time. If you’re financing a deployment, you won’t get the same facility against a two-year warranty - That difference can have a significant impact on your cashflow and balance sheet. 

• Assign value to TCO and functional benefits: A high-quality screen might cost 30 per cent more than a lower-grade model, but that top-tier equipment comes with 50 per cent or more extra guaranteed life – even before you factor in support and replacement costs. A lower cost software platform can do the job of getting content to screens, but can it provide contractually compliant management of your sold inventory? Can the firmware of your chosen displays be remotely updated or will they require site visits. Every saving tends to ‘squeeze the balloon’ and put pressure on other budgets or services, so ensure you balance out the equation to get a true picture.  

The inescapable conclusion is that choosing on price alone at the procurement stage could be a false economy. Making the wrong decision can lead to a total cost that is far higher than the up-front price implies.

What good specification looks like

Let’s conclude with some simple guidance that can help you to make the right decisions at the procurement stage when building a large digital screen estate:

1. Choose hardware with a warranted lifespan that can be depreciated with confidence

2. Build proactive monitoring and solid SLAs into the operational model from day one – not as an afterthought

3. Identify and contract for firmware management as a central part of the project, not an afterthought. 

By building in long-term support and the right operational essentials at an early stage, you will go a long way towards ensuring the smooth ongoing operation of your retail media screens, long-term.