More Retailers Putting Digital Signage Into Budget

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

Consumers are pulling more brick-and-mortar retailers into realizing the need for digital signage.

“Lots of companies are now putting it into their budgets,”
Dan McAllister, senior vice-president and general manager Americas, said at Scala Americas Partner Conference in Austin. “And where the IT people were involved in meetings in the past, now digital marketers are being included in the meetings, because the investment involves consumers.”

With this in mind, Scala has formed two specific committees to help support companies getting involved, as well as making companies aware of a special website, My.Scala.com,“a website we are working on that will be a portal for our partners to access that provides access to all kinds of information that they would need from Scala,” said McAllister.

“Scala needs to be transparent in everything it does,” McAllister said.

An in-house Channel Support committee has been set up, led by Paul Barnhart, senior director, U.S. channel sales, and including Monique Singh, channel sales and marketing coordinator, and David Lineman, channel sales coordinator.

“The Partner Advisory Board is meant to provide the voice of our customer in many areas of our business: Technology, go to market guidance, business operations and efficiencies and more,” said McAlister. “We will be meeting twice a year, at our partner conference and during an event in the fall. I have asked Jan Metzger from Imperatives Inc., Schenetady, N.Y., to be the Partner Chairperson. Jan will be helping me craft the agenda and items needed to be efficient and provide the most valuable input into the board. This is a one-year post. The other members have been asked to commit to a two-year term. I will be heading the board and coordinating the ongoing activities with other Scala members. This is not meant to replace any of our partners worldwide from providing feedback to us.”

In addition to Metzger, members of the Partner Advisory Board include:

  • Brian Russell, CTI Solutions;
  • Lance Hutchinson, Alpha-Video Inc.;
  • Mitch Goss, Zero-In;
  • Chris Roddick, AVI Systems;
  • Bruno Gianzanti, JBTec Digital Signage;
  • Jeff Milligan, Davinci Bridge;
  • Brian Nunes, Signet Media Inc.;
  • Dan Lorenz, Bluewater Technologes Inc;
  • Jeremy Anderson, Ad Art Inc;
  • Diego Sarrade, NeoMedia;
  • Andy Panos, Capital Signs;
  • Angie Guip, Ciel Ingenieria SAS;
  • Jorge Sanchez, Multimedia Corporativa, S.A. de C.V.;
  • James Fine, Telecine Multimedia Inc;
  • Andy McRae, Dot2Dot Communications Inc.;
  • Mike Tippets, Hughes.

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