James Keen | Uniguest

In the invidis Annual Commentary, James Keen, Vice President Marketing at Uniguest, speaks about consolidation and self-serve technology as main industry trends. And IT security as its main challenge for 2023.

Several years back, the digital signage industry was primed for consolidation. We at Uniguest have played a significant part in that, bringing together the technologies of Onelan, Touchtown, Tripleplay, Janus, Sagely, Otrum, UC View, Planet E-Stream, Volara and Mediastar and creating a global powerhouse of digital signage, IPTV, and engagement technologies. Today, we see a moment for growth and innovation as digital signage becomes less of a complex integration solution and more part of the marketing and communications toolkit, as well as a mechanism to ease the challenges caused by scarcity of workforce in some of the markets we serve.

There’s no doubt now that our technology is business critical to many customers of ours, whether that’s IPTV on a trading floor, digital menus in a stadium, secure kiosk in a hotel lobby, lecture capture or resident timetables in a care community – our customers rely on us to help them engage their audiences and improve their organizational performance.

Self-Service as a Strategy

We also need to support staffing shortfalls in many places. Self-serve-as-a-service might sound like marketing speak but it’s a genuine strategy to support businesses who are struggling to staff up to usual levels. Wayfinding digital signage, service ordering through interactive IPTV portals, quick service retail solutions, web surfing or printing facilities in the business center, secure communications through mobile apps – they all empower our customer’s customers, reducing burden on the staff they have in place.

But what happens when you hand control of technology to the public? Invariably you get security and safeguarding fears, worries that systems can be hacked or compromised and so become a reputational and integrity challenge. This is where we take a huge burden of responsibility on ourselves.

Earlier in his career, our new CEO, Matt Goche, was the VP of global security services for a major IT managed service provider; this has kept security front and center in our planning. Prior to his recent change, Matt spent 6 years as our COO and so we have had a heightened level of awareness and focus on security in our decision making and planning, it’s part of our daily practise and DNA.

Customers Demand IT Security

Fundamentally, we know there are risks, but if you keep your eyes and mind open you can mitigate and avoid before the risk develops into a problem.
Continued blurring of the lines between IT, AV and consumer technologies will also start to force the hand of many in the digital signage space to up their game and protect their customers. Choosing the correct platforms, technologies, and hardware to create robust solutions; solutions customers can have confidence in. Security will become even more important to the AV and technology industry, I guarantee it.

In summary, my overarching feelings on the industry are that we will see further consolidation of the digital signage marketplace, self-serve technology will become a key component for businesses trying to manage recruitment challenges and security will firmly remain a challenge for many in our industry, but a key consideration for our customers.

Uniguest solutions are ready to meet these challenges. Uniguest’s vision is to be the world’s biggest digital signage company. More than that though, is to be a trusted partner to deliver secure digital engagement to any IP device. Connected content, deployed everywhere, engaged audiences is our mantra and our technology is enabling that the world over.