BrightSign, Four Winds Take Over 1,000 End-Point Screen Network For Big Plumbing Supplier
December 10, 2021 by Dave Haynes
BrightSign and Four Winds Interactive have released details on what would have been a very nice swap-out win for the two companies – updating roughly 1,000 end-points across the wide U.S. network of a big wholesaler of commercial and residential plumbing supplies.
A case study brief on the deal suggests the supplier – Ferguson – will save about $300,000 in capital costs and see a big boost in uptime with a switch from whoever it was previously using to drive screens in its locations.
“After realizing its legacy digital signage platform had an uptime stagnating around 75% and made deploying localized content difficult,” says the BrightSign brief, “Ferguson sought a true enterprise-grade platform. In addition to the initial challenges that prompted the search for a new platform, Ferguson also wanted to switch to a more reliable, cost-effective player platform. And with 1,000 endpoints across the nation delivering tailored content to specific audiences and business lines, the company needed to simplify the content contribution and management process and leverage best-practices for enterprise scalability.”
“Ferguson also needed a platform with advanced scheduling functionality, capable of accommodating employee-focused content or customer-focused content on the same screens, depending on the time of day. And on top of gaining the ability to deliver relevant communications to associates and customers, Ferguson sought a platform that would allow them to professionally sell ad space to their vendor partners, delivering the ability to ensure Ferguson’s customers have access to valuable and timely information while simultaneously creating a new revenue stream to offset the costs of the network.”
“To immediately solve its network uptime challenges, Ferguson not only replaced its underlying digital signage management platform, but the company also replaced all of its existing content players. Because FWI’s enterprise platform is compatible with multiple player platforms, Ferguson had the opportunity to leverage BrightSign players, a cost-effective option that saved over $300 per endpoint while also drastically improving network uptime. And to streamline every aspect of content contribution, scheduling and device management, Ferguson leverages FWI Cloud.”
In something we’re seeing more and more, the client decided to stick to what it’s good at and outsourced the day to day management of the screen network to Four Winds.
“By enabling location-specific content contribution while still maintaining control of global messaging, the company ensures each location can update its screens with a list of scheduled appointments, special events and more, without sacrificing the ability to maintain a consistent customer experience. And to ensure every aspect of its network is optimized, Ferguson relies on FWI’s Visual Communications Management team, an ongoing managed service engagement that outsources all day-to-day network management to FWI’s software and strategy experts.”
Don’t know who had Ferguson prior to this deployment, but that’s a big loss. But if the 75% uptime number is accurate, that was a troubled deployment. It would have been bad for the client and bad for the service provider if it was having to steadily deal with outages.
The brief is a little unclear as to where the signage network has end-points. One of the images supplied has an HR spin to it that wouldn’t make sense in retail locations open to consumers.
Daniel Hedrick, Digital Signage Strategist at Ferguson will be presenting this case study at DSE: https://sched.co/pYrz