UK: The resort town of Bournemouth bustles with business and tourism in England’s southern coast, generating hundreds of millions of British pounds a year and employing thousands of workers. A major goal of Bournemouth’s Borough Council is making locals and visitors aware of the region’s many activities and events. This task brought with it an internal communications challenge.
The Council had struggled to efficiently coordinate communications and disseminate news to its staff. Direction Marketing & Communications and Scala offered a solution to solve this — a centrally managed digital signage network that informs the council’s staff, based in various locations within the city, simultaneously and instantly if needed. This is the first system of its kind in the region.
“Keeping staff informed across a wide range of departments and buildings is a major problem for any large organization, and we are no exception,” said Jayne Young, Bournemouth Borough Council’s Internal Communications Officer.
Scala Certified Partner Direction created a widespread network of displays strategically positioned in prominent public areas throughout the town. Bournemouth’s new network, called INfo Channel, is currently deployed in the town hall and an outlying depot, with a view to potential expansion to many other community centers such as the local libraries. It comprises a central server running Scala 5 Content Manager software with Scala Media Players driving three 50-inch high-definition screens in the town hall reception area (public facing), the staff Terrace Café and the Southcote Road depot (both staff facing). An additional 10 24-inch staff-facing screens have been deployed throughout the rest of the town hall complex.
“INfo Channel allows us to improve, extend and significantly enhance internal staff communications, and has reduced operational costs,” concluded Young.
Using Scala Content Manager, the Council communications team can now efficiently schedule and distribute all content for each of the displays from a single location. Direction provides customized content, as well as live news feeds for local news, weather/traffic reports and national news. Altogether, the network is replacing paper-based posters, memos and newsletters; reducing staff workload; and improving communications with more up-to-date details on upcoming events.
January 13th, 2011 at 08:35 @399
Another enormous project from Scala. So impressive