Digital Signage for Internal Communication & Offices

easyCMS is based on free Open Source Digital Signage software. This is why there are no monthly recurring fees. Once you have purchased the player, there is no other cost. It is a perfect solution for companies wishing to go digital. Offices, meeting rooms, waiting rooms, cafeteria and canteen, … Dynamic signage in companies is a major asset for informing your employees and customers. Our all-in-one pack contains an LCD screen, an Android Player and a wall mount. These are specially selected to offer lasting performance at the best price.

Internal communication has a distribution problem, not a content problem. Email reaches people at desks. Intranets reach people who go looking. A screen in a corridor, a canteen or a warehouse reaches everyone who walks past it, including the two thirds of a typical workforce who do not sit in front of a computer all day. This page covers what to put on those screens, where to hang them, and what a real deployment costs over five years.

The advantages

• Inexpensive & affordable Digital Signage Solution
• All-in-one solution easy and quick to integrate
• Inform your employees and customers easily
• Communicate in a dynamic and modern way
• Easily distribute information and promotions
• Manage one or more screens from a central point

What actually goes on the screens

Your business can use digital signage to better communicate with employees, helping to improve productivity. Good communication can motivate your staff by highlighting key achievements or displaying the latest sales figures. It is an efficient and modern tool which allows messages to be spread over several departments, floors, buildings, and even in different countries. Here is what that looks like in practice.

Performance and KPI boards

Sales against target, tickets in the queue, orders shipped today, uptime, NPS, production output per line. A KPI board works when the number on it is one a team can actually influence before the end of the shift. Pull the figures from a dashboard, a spreadsheet or a data source and let the screen refresh on its own rather than asking someone to export a chart every Monday. Our note on dashboards for digital signage goes into the detail.

Shift, rota and operational information

Who is on which line, today’s dispatch schedule, tomorrow’s rota, machine changeovers, stock alerts. In a warehouse or on a factory floor this is often the single most useful screen in the building, because the alternative is a printed sheet on a noticeboard that nobody trusts.

Safety and compliance

Days since the last incident, current PPE requirement for the area, toolbox-talk topic of the week, evacuation assembly point, near-miss reporting reminder. Safety content works best when it changes, a static poster stops being visible after a fortnight; a rotating panel with this month’s specific hazard keeps getting read.

Meeting rooms and wayfinding

A small screen beside a meeting room door showing what is booked and by whom stops the corridor conversation about whether a room is free. In the lobby, a directory panel tells visitors and new starters which floor they want.

Visitor welcome

A reception screen that shows “Welcome, Maria Nowak, Acme Logistics” when a visitor is expected takes ten seconds to schedule and makes an outsized impression. The rest of the day it carries your brand video, certifications, latest project or a live news and weather panel.

Internal news and culture

Policy changes, IT maintenance windows, the results of the staff survey, charity fundraising totals, photos from the site visit, long-service awards. This is the content people actually stop to look at, and it is what buys you the attention for the operational content around it.

New starters and recruitment

A welcome panel naming this week’s new joiners and their team helps them get spoken to in the kitchen on day one. On the same screens, open roles and the referral bonus reach the people best placed to fill them.

Canteen and facilities

Today’s menu and prices, the coffee machine that is out of order, the car park closure on Thursday, the shuttle bus times, the flu jab clinic. Low-glamour content that saves a great deal of email.

Where to put screens, and what size

Sizing rule of thumb: the furthest comfortable reading distance is roughly four to six times the screen height for text-heavy content. A 55” landscape screen is about 68 cm tall, so plan for readable text up to around three to four metres. In a canteen where people sit ten metres away, either go bigger or make the text bigger and put fewer things on the layout.

Portrait suits corridors and lobbies because it matches the shape of the wall and reads well as a single column of news. Landscape suits dashboards, side-by-side comparisons and anything with video.

What it costs: a worked example

Take a company on one site: 120 staff, an office floor and a small warehouse. Eight screens, reception, two corridor boards, canteen, warehouse output board, two meeting rooms and one team dashboard.

Because that is more than five displays, the PRO account is the right starting point:

Nothing recurs. Compare that with a per-screen subscription. Rates typically run between €15 and €25 per screen per month; €20 is used below.

That is €8,608 saved on eight screens, about €24.80 per screen per year with easyCMS against €240 per screen per year on subscription. See digital signage cost per screen for the full comparison.

For a smaller office of up to five screens, the standard easyCMS account at €49 with extra licences at €99 is enough: four screens comes to €346, paid once. Above 25 displays, or when you need multiple user accounts with separate permissions, your own domain and white labelling, the Enterprise account is €1,290 a year with licences at €49 and players at €169. Everything is laid out on the pricing page.

Hardware is separate either way. An easyCMS Android player is €499 including its own licence and arrives pre-configured, so it replaces a €99 licence line rather than adding to it. You can also use Windows machines you already own, or LG commercial screens with webOS built in and no separate box.

Running it day to day

Who owns it. In most companies the screens sit with internal communications, HR or marketing, with operations owning the production and safety boards. One named owner with about half a day a month is enough for a single-site network; the failure mode is a screen with no owner, which quietly goes stale and stops being read.

How often to change things. Company news weekly. KPI panels automatically, from a live source. Safety topic monthly. Menus daily or weekly. Visitor welcome as needed. Anything that has not changed in six weeks should either be removed or moved to a poster.

Scheduling. Schedule to the working day rather than running one loop around the clock: a shift-handover panel at 05:45 and 13:45, canteen menus from 11:00 to 14:00, a wind-down loop after 18:00, and screens that switch themselves off overnight to save power and panel hours. Scheduling content covers the mechanics.

Who needs access. Multi-user permissions matter more in offices than anywhere else. Give internal comms full rights, give each department the ability to publish only to its own display group, and keep approval of anything that reaches reception with one person. Nobody should be able to publish to the whole estate by accident.

Multi-site and multi-country. Manage everything from one place, group displays by building, floor, department or country, and push a single campaign to all of them at once while local teams keep control of their own panels. Layouts can carry different language content per group.

Getting started. Connect your first display, then adapt a template in creating layouts.

Endless possibilities

Digital signage gives you the ability to broadcast many types of media such as videos and images. You can also use dynamically updated content like news feeds or weather forecasts. Your first custom layout is included for free with your logo, news feed and weather. If you have specific needs, such as viewing sources specific to your business, we can help. The features page lists what is available out of the box.

Hardware notes for office environments

• Cable management first. A reception screen with a visible power lead undoes the impression it was bought to create. Plan a recessed socket behind the mount, or a flat-profile trunking run, before the screen arrives. Budget for an electrician on lobby installs.
• Screen finish. Lobbies and glass-walled offices are bright and reflective. Choose a panel with an anti-glare coating and at least 400 to 500 nits; for a screen facing a window, more. A domestic TV at 250 to 350 nits will look washed out at 11:00 on a sunny morning.
• Commercial panels. Office screens run all day, every working day. A commercial panel rated for 16/7 or 24/7 running is designed for that; a consumer TV is not, and its warranty usually excludes commercial use. Commercial panels also support portrait mounting, which consumer sets often do not.
• Warehouse and production areas. Dust, vibration and impact risk. Mount high and out of forklift range, and consider a protective enclosure. Fanless players cope better with dust than machines with air intakes.
• Meeting room panels. Small door-side screens need power at the door. Power-over-Ethernet is worth asking about at the design stage; retro-fitting it costs more than specifying it.
• Network. Ethernet where you can; Wi-Fi is fine otherwise. Content is cached on the player, so a network outage does not blank the screens, scheduled content keeps playing. See digital signage without internet.
• Players. easyCMS runs on Windows, Android and LG webOS. The player buying guide explains which to pick.

A complete solution

Our all in one solution reflects our philosophy of simplifying Digital Signage. When you buy our solution with LCD screen, everything is included. Your player is pre-configured with your content and adapted layout. The screen is delivered with its standard wall mounting. Installation is very simple, It’s Just Plug & Play!

Questions companies ask

Can we show live data from our own systems?

Yes. Screens can pull in dynamically updated content, feeds, data sources and web content, rather than being limited to images and video. If you have a specific source in mind, tell us what it is and we will confirm what is possible before you buy.

Can different departments manage their own screens?

Yes. Users and permissions let you scope people to specific display groups and content, so operations can publish to the warehouse board without being able to change reception. Multi-user management is included with the Enterprise account.

What happens to the screens if our network drops?

They keep playing. Content is cached on the player, so a scheduled loop continues through an outage and syncs any changes when the connection comes back.

Do we need one licence per screen?

Yes, one licence per display, paid once. Two screens showing the same content still need two licences.

Can we manage several offices in different countries from one account?

Yes. Displays are grouped, so you can push a group-wide announcement to every site at once and still let each office run its own local content and language.

Is there really no monthly fee?

For the account and licences, no, they are one-time and lifetime. The Enterprise account is the only tier billed annually.

Talk to us about your building

Tell us how many screens you are thinking about and where they will go, and we will come back with a straight answer on cost, including whether your existing hardware will do the job. We are a European company: DynamicDigital sp. z o.o., Warsaw, Poland, VAT PL5213678094, with a VAT invoice on every order.

Email info@myeasycms.com, call +48 509 937 137, or use the support request form. You can also read what digital signage is, see what other organisations have built, or read about the free digital signage software behind easyCMS. If your screens serve students rather than staff, see digital signage for schools; for food service, see restaurants and bars.