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Scala Connected Signage Conference

Author: Digital Signage Central

24 Sep

PHILADELPHIA — Scala has been making headlines all year in the digital signage industry, and used its Connected Signage Conference this week to involve its partners and customers in the company growth. The conference was held Sept. 15-16, 2008 in Philadelphia, in the days leading up to Digital Signage Expo East. Scala conference participants were given passes to the Expo, where Scala was one of the featured exhibitors.
The conference gave Scala partners and customers a chance to interact with the 35 Scala employees present, learn about how to optimize the use of Scala’s Ad Manager and InfoChannel products and find out what the company has in store for 2009.
Scala’s conference was also an opportunity for its vendor partners to network with partners and other attendees. A small tradeshow and networking area featured screen providers such as LG and Samsung, as well as connectivity and content providers Magenta Research, Minicom and Accuweather.com.
As Scala president Robert Koolen said in his opening remarks, the purpose of the conference was to “usher in a new era for digital signage and advertising management.” With the acquisition of MISC and its Ad Manager product in April, Scala has been working to expand its digital signage software capabilities to include scheduling content management for both traditional and print signage.
The result is what Scala calls “connected signage,” a term that encompasses all forms of signage and dynamic media in the out-of-home environment.
“With the acquisition of MISC, we can bring together the best of the static world and the dynamic world into a single management platform for managing content on your network,” said Jeff Porter, EVP of Scala.

Ad Manager joins Scala’s existing InfoChannel 5 software in the company’s lineup of product offerings. All of the software programs are designed to work hand-in-hand as one system.

“It’s not just about digital,” Koolen said. “Customers have many systems they want to manage and they don’t want two different programs to do that.”
A good year
For Scala, the numbers tell the story of the past year. According to Koolen, Scala saw a 69 percent sales growth in U.S. sales in 2007. While digital signage industry sales have been growing at a 20 percent CAGR over the past year, Scala’s global sales have grown at a 40 percent CAGR.
In December 2007, Frost and Sullivan highlighted Scala as one of the standout digital signage software companies and said that the company held a 35.4 percent market share of global digital signage software.
The integration of Ad Manager and InfoChannel is part of Scala’s 2009 goal to simplify the digital signage ad-buying process for media buyers.
“The biggest challenge is financing rollouts,” Porter said. “The goal is to connect all of the dots for media buyers — they’re screaming for solutions.”

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  • Filed under: AccuWeather, Ad Manager, DSE East, Digital Signage Expo (DSE), InfoChannel, LG Canada, LG Electronics, Minicom, Samsung, Scala

    • LG Canada Forrays into Digital Signage

    Author: Digital Signage Central

    12 Jun

    LG Electronics Canada Inc. of Mississauga, Ont. is putting more resources towards growing its channel base in digital signage and in notebooks.

    Shawn Snobelen, director of sales for LG Electronics Canada’s IT and Commercial Sales Division, has been trying to pack in roughly two-year’s worth of work and plans into six months so that the company can continue its growth in the digital signage market place.

    LG has grown its digital signage business 20 per cent from last year, but with that success comes bigger expectations, Snobelen said.

    With that he has built a channel and developed an audio-visual account base with players such as Design Electronics, Edcom and Matrix for LG’s line of digital signage products. LG Canada has also struck alliances with content creators such as Adflow, Boardsign and EK3. He has also toured four cities showcasing these displays to about 700 resellers.

    LG Canada has entered into a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro Canada on digital signage, Snobelen said.

    Solution providers such as SoftChoice and Metafore have also deployed LG’s large format displays through its software and networking solutions.

    “This business comes from everyone and everywhere,” Snobelen said.

    “You get a lot of digital signage business by default because it is growing so fast, but without the right tools and marketing you will not grow the business,” he added.

    For the notebook business, LG Canada is focusing on the power users, which according to various analyst reports is about 44 per cent of the market in Canada.

    According to Snobelen, LG Canada is relying on its channel partners to position its notebook line as a premium model for those users who demand a full-featured product.

    LG recently hired Ipsos-Reid to conduct a study for them on the notebook market in Canada.

    “What we wanted to know was who is buyer our notebooks because the feedback we get is that our products are gorgeous, but expensive,” Snobelen said.

    “A lot of our customers are looking for power and reliability and a notebook that performs,” he added.

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  • Filed under: Canada Digital Signage, Digital Signage Press Release, LG Canada

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