The Power of Using Databases With Digital Signage

We have discussed many facets of designing digital signage content on our blog as well as in our eBook. But some of the best content to provide for your audiences is content that already exists. It is currently being collected in your databases, perhaps in Oracle, SQL, Excel, and other ODBC compliant databases.

Most organizations have a means of collecting and storing data. Whether it is the POS system for a QSR that tracks what menu items are best sellers and at what price, all the way to a manufacturing plant storing production metrics for the factory floors output. This gathered information is most valuable when it can be shared. And even better if it can be shared automatically when it is updated.

The ability to pull databased information and display it on menu boards, corporate communication screens, metric boards and the like puts the power of relevant, fresh content at your finger tips.  Yet, you don’t need to lift a finger to get it there. A digital signage system that can be programmed to query a database for certain changes and data points and then relay that into a specifically assigned region of the content handles all the heavy lifting.

The benefit are immediately obvious. No need to babysit your content to keep it fresh. For restaurants, having an updated inventory database can be used to remove an item from the digital menu when quantities reach critically low numbers or highlight a high profit, overstocked item. For manufacturing, workers are kept in the know about how they are performing and reaching goals. This helps with production and morale.  Event times and places can be pulled into the signage content from the management system for hotels and conference centers, eliminating paper signs and all the effort that goes into creating and changing them.

Having this take place in the background, unattended, frees up time. Time which can be better spent on other tasks, instead of double documentation or having to set up more training for staff to learn how to use a digital signage program. The database-pulling signage will be working for you.

This will be an ongoing series of articles discussing different industries and how they can benefit from displaying databased information on digital signage. Our next article in the series is entitled, “Manufacturing and Databased Digital Signage Content.”