It’s not easy. First, you’ve got hundreds of hardware options out there. Then there are the pitfalls involved with making the wrong choice. There are lots of common problems OEM buyers run into when making hardware purchasing decisions. Here are a few things to avoid.
Dealing with vendors without the flexibility to match your customers’ purpose
A box is just a box, right? Not really. It may not be reliable if it’s not purpose-built to match your customers’ requirements. To help ensure your system will work, you might consider dealing with a digital signage manufacturer with the engineering team to custom-build a project.
At Seneca, for example, our dedicated team can take care of all considerations to build something from the ground up, co-developing the plan for a project sunrise-to-sunset. We consider your desired outcome, special requirements, environmental concerns, and performance needs to help reduce time, cost, and risk.
Next, there’s project optimization, including consideration for the lifecycle of each component. In the design phase, we enhance off-the-shelf designs with custom chassis, accessories, or branding, followed by reliability testing.
We fine-tune the development to make sure you get everything you need. In short, it’s a great value add and nothing short of necessary when taking on a complex project.
Not having a reliable supply chain
A weak supply chain can cause problems for your project – including the ability to even get it done. Delays can be frustrating for both you and your customers. They can be costly as well.
You want a digital signage provider with a solid supply chain to pivot as necessary to get your appliance built and complete the project on time. With a reliable vendor, you’ll get what you need when you need it to avoid delays that can annoy your customers.
Settling for poor or subpar customer service
When you’re going lower end, you’ll get support to match. Unless you’re into solving problems on your own, you need a good foundation of resources to get questions answered.
Support doesn’t just mean troubleshooting. What kind of lifecycle management are you getting from your digital signage hardware supplier? It’s an important question to ask before you enter into an agreement. Is your vendor considering all deployment, service, and refresh needs, including disposition or disposal and financing? It is important to consider the entire lifecycle before manufacturing begins.
Using price as your main decision-making factor
This one’s obvious. Understandably, digital signage hardware pricing is crucial in your decision-making process. You get what you pay for, so a cheaper box might save you money upfront but end up causing more headaches down the road. But uptime is critical in this business, and downtime can be more expensive than the money you might save upfront.
If you want something that works right the first time and every time, you need something expertly engineered and adequately tested.
If you’re looking to mitigate risk, save time, and grow your margins, go with a reliable digital signage manufacturer like Seneca, where you’ll find purpose-built products, a robust supply chain, unmatched support, and the best warranties in the business.
We fully understand the importance of successfully deploying, capturing and managing state-of-the-art video and computing at the edge.
Do you want to save time, mitigate risk and grow your profits?
Learn more about our OEM services