Digital Signage 2.0 marks a fundamental change in the way signage is used in retail and business-to-business environments. Yet it remains undefined, more of an aspiration than a reality. Saturn Communications believes that Digital Signage 2.0 should be making the same impact that the introduction of digital signage did to traditional posters. It gave a new dynamic to the way in which information could be presented and updated.

Recent reports on Digital Signage 2.0 have viewed it as either a better business model for the retail sector or new screen technology. The better business model is about engaging more companies in funding the medium – a not entirely novel idea. Better screen technology may make the screen more attractive to look at but it says nothing about the content, which is, after all, why people are looking at the screen in the first place. Both these perceptions of Digital Signage 2.0 are, of course, highly relevant to the deployment of digital signage but they miss the real potential of the technology.

The term Digital Signage 2.0 does, in part, reflect an aspiration by the AV industry to show technological progress. Rather like the development of the Internet from shop window (Web 1.0) to being invited into the shop to browse with other people, sharing interests and experiences (Web 2.0), Digital Signage 2.0 should seek to engage people in a more meaningful way. Better business models and high tech screens alone just don’t deliver this.

The real advances in Digital Signage 2.0 are being made in the business-to-business market. Here digital signage is becoming a key part of the way businesses function. Primarily it is used to cut through the ‘noise’ of e-mails, intranet, paper and telephone calls that characterise the busy office and call centre. The signage has to give employees concise snippets of highly relevant business messages – almost a distillation of what their intranet, e-mails, business and team briefings are trying to tell them but are so often drowned out by the pressures of the day. It’s not easy. Yet this is where most companies start from: “Let’s get the message out there.” It’s only then that they discover they’ve only scratched the surface of what Digital Signage 2.0 can deliver.

Saturn Communication’s Connectvision is Digital Signage 2.0. The software allows companies to deliver informative and targeted screen content to an entire organisation, individual business groups and teams within a single office or offices nationally and internationally. The next stage is to integrate it within their business processes. For many companies their business data is too dynamic to be prepared and formatted offline prior to distribution, so Connectvision ‘listens’ for changes and automatically formats and distributes it in real-time.