In today’s digitized world, organizations, shared workspace providers, and educational institutions must integrate digital signage into their strategic planning. It allows them to better engage with their employees, students, and customers to ensure productivity and an extraordinary experience for all involved. Aiming to provide exceptional customer service worldwide, IAdea has created one of the industry’s largest partner ecosystems around open standards across a wide variety of business markets including IWMS and software providers. IAdea has been a recognized pioneer in the global digital signage market since 2000. It creates innovative, enterprise-grade digital signage solutions that aid organizations in their digital transformation into smart workplaces
John C. Wang is the Founder and CEO of IAdea, who takes leading efforts to drive the development and standardization of digital out-of-home technologies.
We at Insights Success, in our endeavor to find ‘The 10 Most Innovative Companies Revolutionizing Digital Signage, 2021’, came across IAdea. We talked with John to understand how IAdea has proven itself a highly reliable and secure digital signage hardware provider for over two decades.
Below are the highlights of the interview.
Give us a brief overview of your company, its mission, and the key aspects of its strong foothold in the Digital Signage industry.
IAdea has been creating digital signage solutions for more than 20 years. We have long been cultivating a vibrant ecosystem of world-leading partners that has allowed us to offer complete and comprehensive products.
The exceptional growth of the IoT market has allowed IAdea smart signage products to rapidly grow their capabilities in line with the developing industry. Our focus has been to continuously evolve our technologies and services to turbocharge productivity, ultimately improving the quality and efficiency of the working environments in our daily lives.
Describe your top-notch offerings that address the need of your customers.
IAdea’s “smart workplace solutions” offer a wealth of benefits to businesses. We have created a diverse range of intelligent and flexible solutions that cater to a wide range of space management needs, whether it’s in the office, a business center, or school, library, entertainment area or other spaces — the potential applications are vast, often more than people realize!
Our products include smart room booking panels, desk booking systems, smart signage and digital kiosks. These are complete, ready-to-go systems that can be quickly deployed. IAdea products are carefully designed with an aesthetic that fits naturally into a professional environment, and we try to go the extra mile to understand and support customers’ needs, educate them on the options, and ensure their deployment is successful.
IAdea helps businesses do more with less by maximizing the use of their existing space while also allowing them to increase the positivity of the office experience with seamless, hassle-free solutions that staff use every day. This can include room booking panels and management systems that increase the efficiency of meeting rooms and better use of office space through desk booking solutions, which can better support a flexible workforce.
What makes your company a preferred choice among your clientele over other competitors?
Customers prefer IAdea because we provide enterprise-grade solutions that meet all key requirements in design, features, durability, security and manageability. Using consumer-grade hardware doesn’t offer the same level of security and bespoke application features — such as certified HID card readers, cameras, and security hardware, all of which we supply built-in and ready to go — as well as the durability for everyday use in public spaces. Our complete solutions include pre-installed software and partnerships that are highly flexible to meet a variety of environments and deployments. Extending beyond that, our remote management solution IAdeaCare enables streamlined deployment, monitoring, and troubleshooting of all our devices.
From a business leadership perspective, what is your opinion on the impact of the current pandemic on the Digital Signage sector and the related market?
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital signage was often considered a “nice to have”; used in non-essential, sales-orientated tasks to showcase advertisements and promotions. Since then, the world has rapidly shifted to a ‘touch-free environment, with companies readjusting how they use their office space to accommodate new working models. Customers sought us out because IAdea solutions already enable low-touch or touch-free environments with HID card readers and QR code or smartphone check-ins.
Businesses are striving to bring people back to the office, which IAdea is also accommodating. To ensure confidence in their working environment, temperature screening stations, visitor management kiosks, and wayfinding signs reduce the need for face-to-face interactions, while digital signage can be easily arranged to showcase health alerts alongside company notices, wayfinding, etc., all working together to keep the workplace safe.
Describe the values that drive your organization.
Our mission is to provide comprehensive products and services that deliver smart workplaces and turbocharge productivity. We are committed to improving the quality of the working environments in our daily lives, and we also aim to continuously improve office sustainability by reducing energy waste when spaces are not in use and helping companies effectively optimize their physical footprint to minimize costs.
In your opinion, what could be the future of the Digital Signage market post the COVID-19 pandemic? And how are you strategizing your company’s operations for that future?
In that respect, it’s already here: organizations rapidly realize the value of intelligent environments, in part through digital signage, to create workplaces that are safe and flexible enough to support and monitor hybrid working systems. A trend of distributed teams and workplaces can be accommodated with digital booking systems and connected check-in facilities.
Office management can ensure rooms and spaces are sterilized between uses, overcrowding is avoided, and self-service is available where possible. These will remain for the foreseeable future because they improve the health and wellbeing of their workforce.
In what ways have you or your company contributed to the community?
Easy to use and helpful for businesses and their staff, IAdea enables working environments that improve the wellbeing of those that use them. We help businesses get back on track in the post-pandemic world, giving their workforce the confidence to come back to the office. Our continuing investment in new technologies will help businesses transform the way they operate while also creating a sustainable, environmentally friendly, and healthy working environment for the benefit of everybody.
What are your future aspirations? Where do you see your company in the next five years?
IAdea aspires to be the technology partner for businesses to help improve their resilience and efficiency so they can continue to maximize the effectiveness of their working environment. In that regard, we will continue to build on our successes and remain focused on growing the recognition and capabilities of what smart workplaces can offer, as well as continuing to widen the scope of integration with our partners so IAdea solutions can find every wider application.
We are always keen listeners, and our strength lies in our proactive attitude to the needs of customers. This means continuing to create breakthrough technologies that address the evolving needs of our business partners as they communicate them to us.
John C. Wang, Founder & CEO, IAdea
