Digital Signposts: The Stakeholder-Centric Approach
Sep 24, 2012 10:35 AM,
By Vern Freedlander, Vice President, Production, X2O Media
One of the biggest trends in corporate communications identified by the Communications Executive Board is a shift toward a stakeholder-centric communications approach instead of a company-centric approach. This trend is driven by a number of factors, but the two most important are the emergence of popular consumer devices such as tablets and smart phones in the enterprise, and the power of content-customizable services like Flipboard, Zite, and Spotify. Together, these factors create a new paradigm where individual stakeholders have unprecedented control over what information they consume, and when and how they consume it.
Corporate communications professionals now have to be acutely aware of how their stakeholders consume and interact with content. Once this is understood, they are then faced with the task of customizing their solutions to particular audiences. The one-size-fits-all model is a thing of the past. The challenge now is to build and distribute multiple channels of content that look great, are easily digestible, and are consistently made available on the right device at the right time. It is for this reason that enterprise communications companies are moving away from traditional digital signage and migrating to models that make content available to all screens.
The idea that place-based screens are the only viable means for communicating across an organization has become obsolete. Stakeholders have come to expect the information they need on their terms. That means that sales managers on the road using tablets receive their dashboards in a comprehensive, visually appealing format suited to their device. It also means the CFO gets his or her interactive dashboard composed of key indicators and customizable data on the large office plasma. To meet these requirements, integrators working in the enterprise have to be prepared to put forward solutions that allow content to be easily parsed and distributed to any screen, anywhere.
Vern Freedlander is vice president of production services for Montréal-based X2O Media, a full-service provider of technology, network management, and content services for professional digital signage applications. With more than 20 years of broadcast television experience as a producer, director and executive, Freedlander oversees all of X2O Media’s content initiatives. He can be reached at [email protected].
