Read Time: 4 mins

Let’s be honest: managing digital signage at scale shouldn’t feel like it’s held together with duct tape and hope.

But for many enterprises, that’s exactly what it’s become – a patchwork of general IT tools, one-off scripts, and manual fixes just to keep devices online.

If you’ve ever had to explain why your signage went dark at the worst possible moment, you already know: workarounds don’t scale. 

Digital signage is everywhere. But the tools to manage it? Still playing catch-up.

From retail chains and QSRs to airports and banks, digital signage is no longer a “nice-to-have.” It’s how brands communicate in real time, drive sales, and deliver consistent customer experiences across locations.

But behind the scenes, managing all those displays – across geographies, hardware types, and software platforms – is a growing operational headache.  

The biggest fear? A blank screen. When displays go dark, revenue, trust, and brand consistency are all at risk.

Here’s the kicker: many enterprises are still using IT tools meant for managing laptops and printers to oversee something entirely different.

The result? Gaps in visibility, missed outages, manual reboots, and too many late-night Slack messages.

Sound familiar? These common workarounds shouldn’t be the norm:

• “The device is online... but it's blank.”
  Traditional tools say the device is connected. But they don’t tell you if the content is actually displayed.
  
  

• “We can’t update that device remotely.”
  Because someone locked it down six years ago with a custom script.
  
  

• “Just send someone to reboot it.”
  And hope they know which menu to navigate on that obscure SoC display.
  
  

• “Let’s ping the CMS vendor… again.”
  Because you’re not sure if it’s a content issue, a device issue, or a network issue.

You deserve more than patchwork and guesswork

Digital signage is a business-critical communication channel. It deserves management tools purpose-built for the job.

That means:

• Real-time device monitoring, including screenshots of what's actually playing on the device

• Remote troubleshooting and control across all hardware brands

• Confidence that settings and configurations are delivered and applied, even when users cannot manually validate them

• Automated alerts when things go wrong

• One centralized dashboard purpose-built for signage networks, not general IT

• Freedom from rigid vendor silos and hardware lock-in

Other solutions often trap enterprises in closed ecosystems – limited to certain hardware, software, or OS versions. signageOS takes a different approach.

“We see too many enterprises using tools that were never designed for digital signage and then wondering why things break,” says Tomas Skala, VP of Product & Technical Support at signageOS. ”CloudControl was built to fill that gap and give signage the first-class infrastructure it deserves.”

The better way: purpose-built digital signage device management

signageOS created CloudControl to close this gap. It’s not another MDM repackaged for signage – it’s an infrastructure layer purpose-built to keep your digital signage running like clockwork.

Whether you’re managing 100 devices or 10,000, CloudControl gives you:

• Full visibility into every device and screenshots of what it’s displaying now – and what was displaying before
  
  

• Remote actions for updates and reboots

• Scheduling for settings like brightness and volume control
  
  

• Hardware-agnostic compatibility across all brands and operating systems
  
  

• Proactive alerts and self-healing tools policies
  
  

• Powerful APIs for integrating CMS, third-party tools and enterprise platforms
  
  

• 4000+ features tailored for digital signage

TL;DR: Your devices deserve better

You’ve invested in high-impact devices and a slick CMS. Don’t let basic management gaps ruin the delivery.

It’s time to retire the makeshift monitoring setups and legacy tools.

Because downtime isn’t just lost impressions. It’s lost revenue, trust, and control.

Start managing your digital signs like they’re mission-critical with CloudControl by signageOS.

Want to better understand what signage-specific device management actually looks like?

Read our report on The gap in managing digital signage: What IT tools miss and enterprises need.