Adpearance Creates an Adaptive Display Network with Userful

About The Project

Adpearance is a full service marketing and sales intelligence company that solves complex business challenges with digital solutions. Using a combination of technology, data, and human intelligence Adpearance helps clients who sell offline create better buying experiences to improve sales results. Since its founding in 2009, Adpearance has grown into one of Portland’s largest tech companies and recognized on the Inc. 5000 2018 fastest growing private companies list.

The Challenge

As part of a recent renovation at the company’s headquarters, the management team decided to install a video wall in their lobby to showcase their brand, as well as independent displays throughout the office. The displays are used for both internal communication as well as corporate events, presentations, and displays for customers entering the building. Content changes frequently so it was important for Adpearance’s IT team to be able to centrally manage all of their displays to achieve their communication goals.

With communications being such a key element of Adpearance’s business, they set out to look for a solution that fulfills three primary requirements:

1. The ability to display different content on each display.

2. Easily transition between content platforms such as slide presentations, conferencing, video, digital signage, artistic displays, or other messaging platforms.

3. Centrally manage all displays and content from a single PC.

Unfortunately, all the solutions the team reviewed that enabled mosaic style video walls were either too expensive or limited in their capabilities, and for a time it looked like there was a risk they wouldn’t be able to complete the project.

The Solution

Adpearence deployed 27 displays throughout the office, all centrally managed from a single Intel i7 8-core PC in the central server room. The IT team uses the Userful Visual Networking Platform to:

Show Google Slide presentations with information the staff needs to be aware of on a weekly basis.
Display sales dashboards fed from Salesforce allowing the sales team to have visibility into their monthly progress.
Display multiple dashboards at once, allowing the software development teams to track performance and health metrics for proprietary tools.
Stream video from the web.

The installation was done primarily in-house by the Adpearance IT team, as the system is plug and play. The IT team used the Userful support to complete the install which was “incredibly helpful in troubleshooting any issue”, according to Doug Smith, IT manager at Adpearance.

"Incredibly helpful in troubleshooting any issue”

The Result

After conducting a thorough review of different solutions, Adpearance ultimately decided to go with the Userful solution, as it provided the best combination balance of cost, features, and support. Adperance’s IT team is able to quickly and easily change content on the fly (which happens a lot) depending on business need - all centrally managed. The solution has saved time and countless headaches.