The Problem
More of a promotional board for Wetzel’s – only show product but no pricing (b/c it’s an impulse buy) – this is what the screens are for and why they’re important – dynamic animation that drives foot traffic to the business.
- Previous company was an AV partner, more of an installation company (sold hardware and installed it) – didn’t know how to support a digital signage network, which involves servers, software, content, content management, schedules, and playlists
- Had 1 piece of the puzzle
- Spec’ed a bunch of hardware that didn’t meet the mark and wasn’t the best solution (cheap but didn’t function well or have all the features of a commercial grade screen)
- System on chip commercial grade screen – easier to install and support, better warranties when things break
- Sold and hung a TV – tried to add software and didn’t know how to support – slow response times, significant downtimes, scheduling content mistakes, and then wanted to back out
- A vendor of ours who was also a vendor of the AV company made the referral – they didn’t want to do anything beyond selling and installing
- Running servers/software and diagnosing
We took their infrastructure and put our resources around it to make it better
Scheduling and response times immediately faster
construction/facilities/operations is the liaison here
Excessive downtime, excessive locations menu boards not working, not having the right things at the right location, v cumbersome experience. Only one dedicated support person and not strong on signage or digital software side.
How We Solved It
Took all existing stuff and migrated it into our ecosystem v easily
Immediately starting seeing changes – better responsiveness to requests for content updates and changes, and troubleshooting network performance issues (faster issue resolution and response)
AV team couldn’t troubleshoot and had to have a guy on site to try and do this but it was usually a software issue – didn’t understand the system and would waste 6 hours on site at $100/hr
No need to have a real-life technician visit and interrupt service (remote servicing is way less intrusive than on-site) – less impact on the business, especially food businesses
Service-level objective is to respond within the hour and resolution within 24 hours whereas previously it would have been at least the next business day to have someone come out – reduced response time from within 24 hours or more to within the hour
The Results
- 300 new displays
- New capabilities for the franchisees
- 80 locations on old hardware that we’re supporting through end of lifecycle
- Equipment failure and end of life support
- Deployed new locations and remodels
- Strategy for better ways to use the system – marketing people – recommendations for new tech to add in
- Being one piece of a much larger puzzle
- Expanding into Mongolia
- Now they have someone that has their back and are a phone call away to deal with any issues that arise
