Kaizen Automotive Group Modernizes with Stunning Video Wall

The Kaizen team works hard to ensure customers feel comfortable and confident with who they are dealing with, and part of that effort is state-of-the-art facilities. Kaizen have been using basic TV displays for some time but found them lacking and uninteresting. Looking for a more dynamic solution they turned towards digital signage to showcase exciting offers and events at their dealerships. The Kaizen IT team had looked at alternative solutions, these were time-consuming, lacked features, were complex, hard to scale, maintain and centrally support. When they undertook a top to bottom renovation of their CMP GM dealership in Calgary in 2015, they wanted to find a digital signage and video wall solution that was both visually stunning and easy to implement and use.

Kaizen learned about Userful through UBI Communications, a leading Canadian digital signage company and they deployed an initial project at the CMP GM dealership in Calgary. The large show room made a video wall an obvious choice--a 1x8 banner in a prominent position. “We have monthly deals and events,” explained Kyle Romeril, CMP dealership general manager for the Kaizen Automotive Group. “So we need to continuously update the display content. In the past we would print banners and put them up on the showroom, but in a space that big, a video wall is a much better way to display the information, and the simplicity of the Userful solution makes it easy and quick to keep up to date.”

The CMP dealership installed 17 displays including the 1x8 video wall, and clusters of displays installed around pillars located in the showroom. Kaizen’s second deployment was at their Shaw GM dealership with 9 displays including a 2x2 video wall on the sales floor and displays in the service drive-thru and reception area.

All the displays as well as the video walls in each dealership run off a single server making the solution easy to centrally manage. More displays can be added as needed ensuring the solution can grow as the dealerships grow. Userful allows all displays in each dealership including the video wall to synchronize using “mirror mode.” This ensures the same content can play at the same time on both the displays and the video wall, despite the difference in size and aspect ratio. The fact the solution supports 4k and larger source content enables Kaizen to make use of very high resolution content all of which is supported and maintained by UBI Communications using the SignageLive content management system which is also integrated into the central server.

“Customers are drawn to the displays when they walk into the showroom. The video wall and other digital signs tell them right off this is a modern establishment and they get excited about working with us”, said Romeril. “Userful is simple, easy to use and can expand when needed. The delivery mechanism of the solution is exactly what we were looking for. A simple, flexible and visually impressive solution.”

"...and the simplicity of the Userful solution makes it easy and quick to keep up to date"

The Kaizen Group now can provide a high impact digital experience in their dealerships. They’re able to easily ensure unified messaging — customers see the same promotion and information on the website, in newspapers, and on their video wall and digital signage displays in Kaizen dealerships.

This complete digital signage solution has put Kaizen’s dealerships at the forefront of customer messaging and customer experience in southern Alberta — it provides an excellent communication platform that’s easy to use, can grow as the dealerships grow and doesn’t break the bank.