Helping a Market Leader Evaluate An Expansion Into Open-Architecture Solutions
Client Situation - Considering A Strategic Shift
A global leader in digital signage technology engaged our team to evaluate an important strategic expansion. The company had long been recognized for its purpose-built systems—renowned for reliability, security, and ease of deployment—but saw growing customer interest in open-architecture solutions that offered greater flexibility and integration with third-party software and platforms. The company wanted to understand how best to participate in this segment while preserving the strengths that made its core business successful.
Our Approach - Define the Possibilities, Establish the Positioning
We began by conducting a comprehensive market and competitive assessment across the digital signage ecosystem, speaking directly with systems integrators, distributors, software vendors, enterprise customers, and technology partners. Our goal was to identify where open-architecture solutions fit within the broader market landscape, which customer needs they best serve, and how leading vendors were positioning their offerings for growth.
Our findings revealed that open-architecture systems occupy a smaller but strategically important segment of the market—particularly in sectors that were seen as relatively high margin opportunities. These customers value critical benefits enabled by open-architecture platforms, especially when integrating advanced capabilities linto their deployments. While not as large as other core market segments, these segments remain vital for customers with some of the most demanding performance requirements, and were otherwise beyond our client’s technical reach.
We also identified a key brand consideration. The company’s reputation for simplicity and reliability was a significant strength, but entering the open-architecture space required a shift in messaging—from ease of use to performance, adaptability, and enterprise-grade security. Success would depend on showing customers that the company could deliver both flexibility and the trustworthiness they associate with its name.
Our team provided a set of actionable recommendations covering product strategy, competitive differentiation, pricing, and go-to-market positioning. We helped the client frame its new offering as a natural extension of its legacy strengths, not a departure from them—emphasizing interoperability, performance, and lifecycle value. This work enabled the company to move forward with a clear, evidence-based strategy to expand its reach into open-architecture systems while maintaining its leadership in purpose-built solutions.
