What do I need in my digital signage cms?
What we cover in this post
What to consider before evaluating
Deciding what’s “nice” and what’s critical
Pitfalls and things to look out for
What to consider
Before you even start to look up different CMS platforms, STOP. You’re already missing a critial step.
A CMS is designed, in it’s most basic form, to deliver media to your screens, so before you start trawling through the web and looking at thousands of options, grab a pen and paper or open up your documents and do this..
Document what content you want to deploy and how
Start by going through this checklist for content.
Do you want to deliver…
Images
Videos
Web-pages
Dashboards with sensitive data (like Power BI etc)
Live streams
Touchscreen content
Widgets (either that you make yourself or from the CMS platform)
Data-driven content I.e a menu board with your POS integration
Now that you know what content you want to deliver, you can start to consider variables. Think about WHO is managing the content.
Will you have different teams, should they have a Siloed and will they have different areas of the screen or different screens entirely that they need to control?
Some CMS platforms offer granular user permissions or at the very least, a way to seperate playlist access so there’s no communication cross contamination (this can be pretty complex when you start looking at enterprise-size roll-outs with screens displaying sections of different departmental content.
Security and access
If you’re approaching this article from the IT department, you already probably know this but if you (like me) come from more of a Marketing background, you’re going to need to look at security features early on. If you haven’t already consulted with your IT department on what are the do’s and don’t on adding a software stack to your company, do this first.
Look out for specific security certifications. There are two highly regarded certifications globally
SOC 2 - I’m no expert of SOC 2 so here’s perplexities definition “SOC 2 stands for System and Organization Controls 2. It is a voluntary compliance framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to evaluate and validate an organization’s information security practices, particularly those related to managing and protecting customer data stored in the cloud or handled by service providers”
ISO27001 - Having witness ISO27001 certification first-hand, it’s more about how you’re business handles and practices with data. It’s not the security of the software itself, more the capability and management of absolutely everything (Think about things like email management, office security and best practices etc).
The software
How do you know you’re looking at a robust software for security?
There’s no bullet-proof way of saying a system is totally safe (it’s just not possible) but companies you give access to certain tools and do good things to help the security such as…
Penetration testing - In essence, they hire a hacker of sorts that tries to break into their platform in a secure instance to point out any flaws that then need to be fixes. These should be regular and ongoing.
Two factor authentication - Allowing users to enable 2FA gives you an additional layer of security as you’ll need to validate your login with a separate personal device.
Single Sign on - If you’re business already uses SSO, you may want to add your CMS to that SSO portal. You can read more about SSO here
Hardware
There are two routes depending on your position…
“I already have hardware”
If you already have hardware (and you want to keep it) your journey is simple, find the CMS that works with your existing hardware (BUT TEST IT FIRST). Get hold of a demo or trial license and go through the activation to make sure you’re hardware truly is compatible. Outdated hardware can become exempt from certain features so make sure to test it thoroughly.
“I need to buy new hardware”
Ok great, you should most likely reach out to a reseller (either one you already know or one that is reputable in your area).