The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

The Spanish-based solutions provider and integrator Netipbox Technologies has been providing AV and IT-driven digital signage solutions in that region, and across southern Europe, for more than a decade. In recent years, the company has rounded out its offer by developing and marketing its own software solution.

That platform got to a level of maturity and customer acceptance that the company - which has a main office in Barcelona and satellites in Madrid and Miami - spun out the software as its own thing, called Nsign.tv.

The SaaS platform is focused mainly on retail applications, leverages IoT data, and was designed in a way that makes it easy for third-party functionality - things like queue management - to drop into the management and control software as applets, with minimal extra coding or fuss.

I had a chance to speak with CEO Toni Vinals about the roots of the company and product, and how it operates. We also go into what's happening in what seems like a very active digital signage scene in Spain, and get some tips on what to see and do for those people heading to Barcelona in February for ISE. Like me.

TRANSCRIPT

Toni, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me what the distinction is between Nsign and Netipbox Technologies? 

Toni Viñals: Sure. Netipbox Technologies was a company I started 12 years ago in the digital signage industry, and we started delivering and doing projects for basically the retail and food industry, and then we jumped into the industry called digital signage where we didn't know anything about it, and we started developing projects with different softwares, different solutions and different technologies, and we also realized that our end users basically, marketing directors and operations directors didn't understand very well the technology that was behind the screens.

So we decided to start developing our own product based on the market and user needs, and three years ago, we decided to market the product and do a spinoff of Netipbox Technologies and with other people and with focus in terms of business, we developed a product called Nsign TV, which is already a product for a digital signage industry based on the market insights that we get from Netipbox. 

We are co-founders of two companies. One is Netipbox Technologies, which is based in Barcelona and is basically focusing on clients, end users and B2C customers based in South Europe and we have Nsign TV, which is a global product that we are deploying worldwide through partners in the digital signage industry. 

Okay. So would it be fair to say that Netipbox is more of a solutions provider versus Nsign, which is a SaaS software platform?

Toni Viñals: That’s a hundred percent correct but also Netipbox is an AV integrator too actually.

Okay, and from what you're describing, it sounds like you developed this software because what was available on the market wasn't really meeting the needs and wasn't friendly enough for the marketing directors you were dealing with, and so you developed this and then decided to make it its own product instead of just an in house solution?

Toni Viñals: That's correct. We realized based on our insights that in Spain, which is not a very digitized country in cooperation with other countries where digital signage is very insulated, that the approach to the market was a very AV or IT-first approach. You need the screen, then you need the digital media player, you need a CMS, and then you the operator runs the content, but the technology and the industry and the market were demanding. 

Digital signage is a solution that is based on content, based on communication. So it means that it has to be related with a marketing and communications department and the marketing and communications departments are very very dynamic, and a very real time communication division. So brands want to speak to the customers very fast. So we found that the solut