After Purchase Costs and Outdoor Digital Signs
Servicing of external outdoor LCD displays presents far too often an unanticipated rising costs and a bad “first” experience for both, system integrators and their clients. In manufacturing circles it’s known that for system integrators / customers who are just starting businesses with digital signage, EU producers are often second choice due to higher prices. But after initial bad experience they quickly became their first choice. The question is why?
Outdoor digital signs are deployed in public areas, which can be located far away from service personnel, making every intervention costly. Due to the nature of product type, it is not possible to simply wait for service for days in non-operational state. Costs can reach thousands of euros per unit a year.
Such high numbers can break the business case, as this part of after purchase costs is usually not incorporated into cost structure. Such project can become very bad experience for customers, as well as integrators. Especially in case when system integrators arrange fixed amount of servicing contract, while spending extensive amount of time on site. Therefore, for lowest possible after purchase servicing costs, it is welcome that LCD kiosks are:
Reliable
Have minimal maintenance requirements
Have minimal failure rates
imotion G7 75 Portrait Freestanding
All the above points are hard to evaluate before purchase. Every manufacturer will say that their products are reliable. Best advice to avoid purchasing a bad product is to buy from companies with long history in outdoor LCD signs industry. Always have in mind that outdoor LCD kiosks are a complex solution.
The main idea is to visit the sites of installations as least as possible. To achieve that outdoor display must be technically managed from remote location and be capable of different functionalities, it has to be:
Automatic self-diagnostics – take away the need of constant system surveillance, as automatic reporting is available
Remote system analysis functionality – lowers down the need to go on-site, especially in case of simpler system failures (e.g. player issues – Frozen OS, etc.)
Let’s play with numbers. For example, if a customer/integrator has a network of 15 outdoor LCD kiosks and if a conservative total cost per intervention/unit is 100€, one visit per year for the whole network cost 1,500€. With every visit costs grows rapidly. We have included calculations for cases of 1,2,6,10 and 15 interventions to show advantage of minimal on-site servicing.
| Interventions per network | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | € 1,500 | € 3,000 | € 4,500 | € 6,000 | € 7,500 |
| 2 | € 3,000 | € 6,000 | € 9,000 | € 12,000 | € 15,000 |
| 6 | € 9,000 | € 18,000 | € 27,000 | € 36,000 | € 45,000 |
| 10 | € 15,000 | € 30,000 | € 45,000 | € 60,000 | € 75,000 |
| 15 | € 22,500 | € 45,000 | € 67,500 | € 90,000 | € 112,500 |
Be aware that depending on region, costs can vary greatly! As company interested in delivering products with minimal on-site visits, we engineer outdoor digital kiosks to incorporate highest levels of reliability, operation, remote system access and system self-analysis.
That is why our imotion outdoor LCD signs have NO REGULAR maintenance. This does not only save time and money, but it mostly gives the capacity for technical team to go to the site completely prepared and aware of what needs to be fixed or replaced.
To see detailed information about our standard outdoor digital signage product lines click button bellow.
If you are interested in learning more about technology behind imotion outdoor digital displays? Follow link bellow.