Some solutions require extensive labour hours, or specialized personnel to deploy, that translates into higher costs, that could be avoided by purchasing a simpler, more flexible system.
System integrators should keep in mind that that’s complicated to deploy is often going to be complicated to maintain giving customers an overall increase in TCO and risk of downtime.
Service and Support Costs
Service and support is one of those hidden costs that customers fear. It’s important for any system integrator to know what their products ongoing support burden is as well as that of the competition. Consider the complexity of the system. Proprietary systems usually require specialized service skills, which have limited availability and are more expensive.
Consider the cost of replacement parts for proprietary hardware and the downtime while waiting for these (even the future availability of replacement parts). Anything proprietary may not be around in a few years. Hard to come by (or expensive to inventory) replacement parts translates into greater downtime.
Facility Operating Costs
Facility operating costs include things like power consumption, the cost of cooling systems, dusting any player devices that have fans, rack mounts, facilities required to house and deploy the system, amongst other costs. This even includes cleaning the displays from dust or fingerprints as well as periodic color re-calibration.
Video walls that can be configured to turn off at a set time each night and startup at a set time each morning can cut power costs in half and can extend display life. Low-power devices with no fans can eliminate “behind the screen” maintenance, which is the most expensive type of maintenance.
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Choosing a network delivery approach can keep your video wall server in a cool low-dust server room, increasing hardware life and eliminating the need to open up a locked enclosure to access the video wall server. These maintenance costs quickly add up to thousands of dollars during the lifespan of a video wall and wise selection of a video wall solution can keep these costs to a minimum.
Content Creation and Management
They say “content is king” and truthfully showing the right content at the right time is the main reason the customer is installing the video wall in the first place. Being able to easily switch between content sources (for example from a smartphone or web-browser) or even being able to show multiple content sources simultaneously on different sections of the video wall can easily double or even triple the customer’s content exposure value.
Premature replacement of a video wall because it hasn’t been able to grow with the customers needs is the biggest TCO risk in a video wall deployment. Thoughtful discussion up front of where the customer might want to go in the future can help eliminate this risk and give one system integrator an advantage over the competition.
Today’s content can range from standard video formats to slideshow presentations, interactive web-content (i.e. HTML5, etc.), web streaming, live TV/Satellite, and even HDMI/SDI sources (i.e. Cameras, laptops, etc.) as well as managed content from a CMS. Solutions like the Userful Network Video Wall natively support all these content sources, allowing easy configuration and delivery to the video walls.
Some video wall solutions are limited in the content they can support (eg some common video wall solutions cannot support real time dynamic content) meaning any customer that purchases that solution is boxing themselves in and potentially increasing total costs should they decide to use real time or dynamic content in the future.
As the world gets more connected and communicative, the ability to display real time content is increasingly important.
Conclusion
Identifying and understanding the factors involved in TCO helps a system integrator guide customers in their decision making process. When selling a solution as expensive as a video wall, customers have a lot invested and they will listen attentively to those who can speak in an educated way about the costs they can expect both today and tomorrow.
Hidden costs represent significant expenses, sometimes even exceeding the tangible costs. With TCO in mind, the biggest thing system integrators need to avoid is recommending a system that can’t grow with the customer. Remember, the competition may be one step ahead and recommending a solution that will grow with the customer.
One of the major advantages of software-based video wall solutions is they accommodate this kind of growth and expansion over time.
System integrators who understand how to communicate TCO as it relates to video walls will have a leg up on those who don’t.
Author Timothy Griffin is CTO and Founder of Userful Corporation.
