Note, we have redacted the described company’s name for company privacy.
We recently interviewed one of our clients, which is a quickly growing property management group in Canada (we will refer to this company as “the group” throughout this article). From 5,000 units 9 years ago, this group has grown to now manage and operate approximately 10,000 units. In this expansion, the company has grown from 150 clients three years ago to over 500 clients today. One of the group’s strengths is repositioning and renovating unwanted properties into beautiful facilities and communities.
The beginnings of the group’s digital signs
Three years ago, the group’s IT department consisted of just one person. Their sole IT employee was looking for a digital signage solution for the group, and, as a Raspberry Pi enthusiast himself, he came across Screenly. He set up the company’s first digital sign with Screenly software on the company’s only TV at the time, a unit located directly in the CEO’s office. After implementing digital signage on this first screen, the company was hooked. Given the location of the first screen, it wasn’t hard to get approval to use Screenly throughout the group’s property portfolio.
The group now has a variety of use cases for Screenly digital signage. The company uses Screenly software internally to display company events, employee birthdays and career moves, and other general company updates. Within the property buildings, the group uses these digital signs to display building-specific information that is relevant to building residents. For this digital signage displayed within properties, the group displays building and neighborhood specific events, information on property amenities, and welcome messages for new residents. The group will even display package delivery notices to residents so that they can easily know whether or not it’s time for them to visit the mail room. Additionally, the group uses digital signage “in the field” during marketing and recruiting events through the use of a 4G mobile internet stick and mobile display screen.
The current status of the group’s digital sign deployment
The group currently has approximately 17 screens in operation, and they only started scaling their use of Screenly just 6 months ago. The group now has 10 screens deployed in property buildings, 4 screens deployed internally for company communications, 2 “roaming” screens that are used in marketing and recruiting events, and one projector that is integrated with Screenly. The company is rapidly growing their use of Screenly, and, in addition to scaling their current Screenly use cases, the company is looking to use Screenly for dashboarding company performance metrics in the near future.
The group finds the cheaper deployment costs and the ease of implementation of Screenly to be particularly valuable features. In order display relevant and engaging content to both employees and building residents without Screenly, the group would have needed to deploy expensive computers and servers with each remote screen or would have needed to use a suboptimal USB/smart-TV solution. Screenly offered a better and cheaper solution, as it allowed a fleet of screens to be fed content remotely with a simple, cost-effective Raspberry Pi.
Conclusion
Digital signs have been a great success for the group. The group has received positive feedback from tenants who excitedly state that the group is technologically way ahead of any other property group they have used. The screens and targeted information add a personal touch and sense of community to the atmosphere of each property. The group is also finding increased work engagement with employees, as employees have grown increasingly excited regarding the possibilities with Screenly technology. The company states that employees have been “coming out of the woodwork with ideas” for applications of Screenly. We look forward to learning more about these new applications of Screenly in the months to come!
