‘Technology assists with maximising the inventory use’

OOH businesses in general are somewhat conservative in the adoption of new technologies, especially in the developing and emerging markets. What factors will encourage a greater number of OOH enterprises to embrace new technologies to do business better?

As digitalisation complexifies the inventory management, at Ayuda we think support is a point of honour. We support clients throughout the transition process of Ayuda. We’re constantly working on the agility of our software to adapt to their specific needs: we offer a full control of the business processes, real time information and reporting. Moreover, OOH companies in 2018 can’t only count on excel spreadsheets to manage their digital and static inventory. They can be managed through our robust and complete solution, that can also do charting, thanks to CMS. 

While taking your products and services to different markets around the globe, do you connect directly with the target companies or do you work with the OOH industry bodies that in turn build awareness of your offerings among the business leaders?

We do both. We introduce our offering to OOH companies at conferences and tradeshows organised by industry bodies around the world (the OMA in Australia, for example). We also work in collaboration with the OOH associations to propose our software solutions to their members. In some countries, we even provide our software development expertise directly to the association as an advisor and supplier. We power the Geopath portal in the US, for example.

Do you see a correlation between adoption of new technologies and business growth? Please illustrate your response with some examples.

Of course. Technology assists with maximising the inventory use and as a result growing revenue and profit. Our software applications are systems that have the objective of bringing value to a business. When we work with our clients, our primary focus is to improve their business. It is not to install a software tool. We have worked for several years now with Ströer in Germany and can measure the additional revenue brought by our innovative products. Similarly, our services in Australia have helped Adshel becoming an innovative leader in their sector.

Any OOH firm opting for your products and services will have to undertake major retraining of their workforce to achieve optimum gains from the investments. How do you help your client organisations in this regard?

The implementation of our platform follows a well-tested and rigorous methodology. As part of this process, we onboard our client workforce and ensure that they fully understand each module of our platform. Our project managers and business analysts are accustomed to this exercise. The transition to our software is often seamless.

As the majority of the OOH firms in different markets are small & medium enterprises that may not have the financial muscle to invest in big ticket business solutions, are there ‘pay as you use’ cloud-based offerings for such enterprises?

This is exactly how we do our business at Ayuda. We are a cloud solution, and our pricing model is based on usage: our customers pay for their use of our software as they go. It is indeed a "pay as you use" cloud offering for small and medium, but also for large enterprises.

Looking ahead, what are the major changes that you expect to see on the OOH landscape and how technologies will shape the contours of the new landscape?

Digital has been a game-changer in the industry and Ayuda has been following this trend since it started. We built our digital player 10 years ago and are the only provider of a fully integrated platform that extends from sales to invoicing for digital, static and transit. We see OOH companies continuing to invest in programmatic selling solutions to increase revenue. They will also make use of audience data to target specific demographic groups. Hivestack is an Ayuda sister company focused on programmatic. The two companies work in partnership and offer an innovative OOH programmatic solution that addresses these two trends.

Have you considered establishing your business presence in India? 

We would love to. The digital signage market in India is very promising: a growth of 25.8% has been expected between 2014 and 2019. Our marketing and sales teams are currently working hard on the project.