Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research installs a complete Digital Signage solution powered by Signagelive

Introduction

Since 1998, the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research has grown to become one of Australia’s leading adult medical research centres, where more than 450 research and trial staff work together to defeat major diseases. It is located across two new state-of-the-art research facilities co-located with the major teaching hospitals.

Tell us a little about how you are using Signagelive?  

Harry Perkins uses Signagelive in conjunction with BrightSign to provide a complete signage solution across the 2 Perkins Research Institute facilities. This solution manages the creation, scheduling and delivery of content to a large number of LED screens, info boards and our large foyer banner displays.

There are other SaaS based digital signage options out there, why did you choose Signagelive? 

One of our partner organisations was already using Signagelive and were very happy with every aspect of the solution. In addition Amped Digital had provided highly effective implementation and ongoing support services and the combination was highly recommended. Given our existing inflexible proprietary signage infrastructure – where everything had to come from one manufacturer, software updates were large projects with complex firmware dependencies and we couldn’t simply choose the best or most cost effective devices.

Signagelive has been the proverbial breath of fresh air delivering significant cost savings and reduced administration overheads and provides a solution that is far more agile in presenting content.

BrightSign media players were chosen purely due to their reliability in these fast-paced environments, the XT244 offering POE+, the ability from frame-accurate synchronisation along with full feature support from the Signagelive CMS, means from installation to content management the system is simple to manage and support.

What were the reasons for implementing a digital signage network? 

The infrastructure was already in place as a proprietary solution when the buildings were completed in 2013/14 and Signagelive has significantly improved upon this at every level. The signage across our 2 state-of-the-art research buildings with multiple tenants is a vital and valuable part of our communications strategies and our brand, and therefore Signagelive has provided major business benefit to the institute.

The purpose of this project was to increase platform reliability and time spent managing the system to a minimum, taking the stress away from facilities management, allowing them to focus on other tasks other than just updating their internal digital signage communications.

How were these objectives being met previously? 

The proprietary solution could meet the basic requirements though nothing like as effectively and efficiently as Signagelive.

How did you build a business case internally for Signagelive? 

The existing solution was at the end of life and was going out of support. The business case was that Signagelive was both the cheapest and the most functional and flexible replacement solution that we evaluated. 

What is the best thing about Signagelive, in your opinion? 

It’s a potentially complex set of technologies made simple.

What is your favourite feature? 

It’s a very complete solution that doesn’t need lots of training, doesn’t consume huge amounts of time to maintain, and is reliable in operation.

Did you face any challenges during any part of your project implementation? How were these resolved?

Perkins benefited hugely from the skills and experience of Amped Digital. There was considerable time and effort in the analysis and design stages and we didn’t lose much time dealing with unexpected issues. Overall it was a quick and well-executed project completed ahead of schedule and within budget.

The beauty of BrightSign media players is the simplicity of setup (virtually and physically) allowing for plug and play use and rapid troubleshooting of issues – if there were any issues during the initial installation phase.

How has business improved since using Signagelive?

Much improved communications via the greater functionality available. Our tenants adore working together with our FM team delivering more dynamic content.

What advantages does Signagelive offer?

The solution is flexible in so many ways to address our different tenant requirements. As equipment such as panels age, we have options to deploy new technology and reuse old equipment where we can – which is both a cost-saving and also reduces our e-waste. Being cloud-based and having a simple licensing model means that we haven’t had to purchase on-premises software licenses, and we maintain fewer virtual servers with all the associated costs and overheads such as backups, patching etc.

 

Signagelive has proven to be an excellent long-term solution for our myriad corporate and tenant needs. We have complete confidence that its functionality and flexibility can meet future demands as new business requirements emerge, and will continue to enable us to make optimal and cost-effective use of new products and technologies to help promote research.

Andy Crowhurst, Facilities Operations Manager, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research  

Our team have worked with many CMS’s on the market and we particularly enjoy the process from start to finish implementing Signagelive into new environments for our clients. 

The Signagelive solution was the right fit for Harry Perkins as they have a range of staff in different departments required to manage content in designated areas. The reliability of the Signagelive on the BrightSign media player is outstanding, and something that we believe solves the best both worlds in hardware and software for Digital Signage solutions. 

Signagelive has the features of tier 1 enterprise CMS’s with the simplicity of Facebook as a user interface.

Dylan Holtzhausen, Director of Operations, Amped Digital 

Signagelive and Amped Digital have successfully partnered on many projects in a relatively short period of time. Matt, Dylan and their team take a professional and honest approach rarely seen in the industry. The Harry Perkins Institute is our first major project undertaken together.
From the start, we were able to meet the existing needs and exceeded expectations by offering additional features which The Harry Perkins Institute flagged as a necessity. We were able to provide these literally ’out of the box’. The flexibility and scalability of Signagelive were evident in the outcome.

Nick Curulli, Business Development Manager Australia, Signagelive