“NEC has a very aggressive target for its return on investment in this revolutionary Web-based tool. It is the convergence of technology and business opportunity that is making it possible.”

1. Microsoft Customer Solution
Manufacturing Industry Case Study
NEC Set to Expand Market for Ads, Content
on Public Screens; Rapid Payback Expected
Overview “NEC has a very aggressive target for its return
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing—High tech on investment in this revolutionary Web-based tool. It
is the convergence of technology and business
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, NEC opportunity that is making it possible.”
Display Solutions of America provides
Pierre Richer, President and Chief Operating Officer, NEC Display Solutions of America
innovative desktop LCD monitors,
commercial-grade and professional- NEC did not just want to enter the market for digital place-based
grade large-screen LCD displays,
multimedia and digital cinema projectors,
advertising—the advertising that appears on screens in malls,
and integrated display solutions. airports, and other venues. It wanted to expand that market by
Business Situation
changing how advertisers and network operators do business.
NEC wanted to enter the market for To do that, NEC is about to launch a pair of Web-based
digital place-based advertising with a
solution to benefit advertisers and
applications that largely automate the manual processes that
network owners and increase its own make up the traditional ad campaign. These include identifying
revenues.
potential ad networks, negotiating placement, managing the
Solution final product, and reporting on ad play. To create a fully
The NEC solution gives network owners
reach into the national market and gives
functional, robust solution quickly and cost effectively, NEC
advertisers the timely data that they need turned to Microsoft technologies and Project Leadership
to boost campaign effectiveness.
Associates, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. NEC expects its
Benefits digital solution to increase both the effectiveness of ad
• Expected to boost revenues, expand
the market
campaigns and the revenues of the networks hosting them—
• Expected to deliver the fastest payback and to deliver the fastest payback in NEC history.
in company history
• Accelerates processes, increases
effectiveness
• Provides daily proof-of-play reports

2. “If we wanted larger Situation Given the labor-intensive nature of that
Nowadays, even people who do not watch process, it may not be surprising that
revenue growth—and we television watch television. It is hard not to digital place-based advertising accounts for
when video display screens are increasingly just 1 percent of total advertising
did—we knew we would present in airports, banks, universities, fast- expenditures in the United States. What
have to look elsewhere.” food restaurants—even the checkout line at may be surprising, however, is that during
the corner grocery. But, for the most part, the difficult economic climate of the “Great
Pierre Richer, these display screens are not used to show Recession,” it has been one of only two
President and Chief Operating Officer, traditional television programming. Instead, advertising media—the Internet is the
NEC Display Solutions of America
they stream news and local weather, offer other—that has jumped in revenue.
information about the venues in which they
are located, or provide instructions in the An Evolution for NEC
event of an emergency. Meanwhile, NEC Display Solutions of
America, which manufactures the displays
And, increasingly, these screens are being used in many of these venues, decided to
used to display advertising, which is reevaluate its business model. The
referred to in the industry as “digital place- traditional display-screen market had low
based advertising.” revenue growth because, even though unit
sales were rising, profit margins were
The Traditional Process declining. The company addressed that
The screens themselves may offer the latest trend by evolving from a display provider
technology, but the tools used to load the to a full system integrator, offering PCs,
display content generally do not. That cables, mice, content management
process can begin with advertisers or their software, and consulting and installation
agencies calling hundreds of venues or services along with the screens.
networks to gather the information they
need to make placement decisions. The “The move from selling just displays and
information they require includes not only other hardware to offering system
availability and rates, but also details about integration services helped to drive
the venue, the amount of foot traffic revenue, but modestly,” says Pierre Richer,
around the screens, the demographics of President and Chief Operating Officer for
viewers, whether the viewing data is NEC Display Solutions of America. “If we
independently audited for accuracy, and so wanted larger revenue growth—and we
on. did—we knew we would have to look
elsewhere.”
The IT department at each venue (or the
store manager or other administrator, if the The digital place-based advertising market
venue is not large enough to support an IT seemed a perfect extension of the
department) generally has to load the company’s business. NEC sales personnel
digital advertising content to the content were already talking to customers about
management system that feeds the screens. buying display solutions. Running
Once the ads have run, the venue must advertisements on those displays to
prepare and send a “proof-of-play” report generate additional income was a natural
to inform advertisers exactly where and next step.
when their ads ran. That report often takes
up to two weeks to arrive. Although this new digital place-based
market was small by general advertising

3. standards, it was large compared to the Introducing Vukunet
market for display solutions. Equally NEC has met those requirements, and
promising, there were no real competitors more, in an Internet-based application
offering the end-to-end service for called Vukunet, and a companion solution
networks and advertisers that NEC called Advuku. Each has its own Web site.
executives envisioned. The aggregators that Network operators register on the Vukunet
did exist worked mainly with advertisers, Web site. After registering, they download
not networks, and used the traditional and install a player application on the PCs
manual process to receive, book, and connected to their displays. This application
distribute ads. retrieves information about the PCs and the
displays connected to them (for example,
Solution screen size and orientation, audio
NEC considered the requirements for an capability, and display model) and
end-to-end service that started with an automatically uploads the information to
advertiser identifying which venues and the Web site through a Web service.
networks to approach, and ended with the
playing of the advertiser’s content on a Networks can then enter information about
venue’s display screens. In NEC’s newly their venues, including location, number of
defined business model, the service would displays, audience demographics, foot
have to be highly reliable to keep traffic, auditing status, and industry
advertisers and networks engaged. It would designation (such as healthcare or
also have to be extremely scalable in order banking). Network operators also decide
to support the growing ranks of advertisers when they are willing to have ads run on
and networks that are sure to evolve in this their systems; Vukunet provides a range of
market segment. scheduling options.
Development of this end-to-end place- Meanwhile, advertisers or their agencies go
based advertising product would have to to the Advuku Web site to identify
be fast and easy so that NEC could quickly potential venues on which to run their
launch a full-featured, robust service that content. They can filter search results by
discouraged potential competition. And any of the categories of information
because network operators would continue provided by the network operators. The
to run content from sources in addition to results are displayed as pinpoints on a map
NEC, the service had to coexist with those so that advertisers can easily see the
other sources, by running its own content potential geographic coverage of their
as scheduled and turning control of the advertising. They can click any of the pins
displays to other sources as programmed to get detailed information about a
by the networks. particular network.
In addition, the service would have to work When advertisers have located networks on
with the hardware and software that which they would like to run ads, they can
advertisers and networks already use. It contact network operators and make offers
would need a visual, intuitive user interface. for time on the operators’ screens.
And to be cost effective for network Operators can accept or decline the offers
operators, it would have to be highly or continue negotiations, all through the
automated and work without the Web site. Operators can also use the
intervention of the IT department. solution to preview advertising from

4. “We chose Microsoft advertisers they do not know in order to mission-critical applications,” says Michael
confirm that content meets their standards. Zmuda, Director of Business Development
because we felt it was a In addition, operators can easily set the for NEC Display Solutions of America.
application to automatically approve “Third-party resources for the Microsoft
mature, reliable software content from advertisers they know and platform are readily available at every
platform for our mission- trust. stage, from development to support. And
by building an end-to-end solution based
critical applications.” When an advertiser and a network reach an on Microsoft technologies, we didn’t have
agreement, the content and schedule are to struggle to make products from different
Michael Zmuda,
Director of Business Development, automatically downloaded to the display vendors interoperate.”
NEC Display Solutions of America screens, and the ads are played during
times that the network operators have set As part of this approach, NEC chose
aside for advertising. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
data management software for the back-
After ads have run, Vukunet automatically end database. And the analysis and
uploads proof-of-play reports from the reporting capabilities are based on SQL
networks and provides the information Server 2008 Analysis Services and SQL
through Advuku to advertisers daily. Server 2008 Reporting Services. “With SQL
Advertisers can access that information, Server, we felt we could get the throughput
plus monitor budgets, demographics, we needed to serve advertisers and
campaign geography, numbers of networks with information in real time and
impressions, and more, through a the reliability to help ensure that the
dashboard when they log on to Advuku. information in our mission-critical
Network operators, meanwhile, can access applications would always be available,”
a similar dashboard in Vukunet that shows says Mike Corcoran, Director of IT for NEC
them the status of ads on their network. Display Solutions of America. “SQL Server
provided the optimal solution for Vukunet
The solution includes a content and Advuku in terms of features,
management system that network performance, development, and support.”
operators can use to manage any content
they want to show on their displays. On the user interface side, the Web site is
Additionally, because the solution works built in Microsoft ASP.NET on the Microsoft
with any standard content management .NET Framework 3.5. The Microsoft
system, operators can continue to use a Silverlight 3 browser plug-in is used to
system that they already have in place. The run preview video, while Bing maps and
application also includes a software media Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
player to play content on each screen. The controls display search results. They
player installs itself on the PCs that control are both consumed as a Web service based
the displays and updates itself on the Windows Communication
automatically as needed. Foundation programming model and
provide mapping functionality in the online
Choosing an End-to-End Platform application. NEC also used the Microsoft
To create Vukunet, NEC decided to use ADO.NET Entity Framework in the data
Microsoft technologies from the back-end access layer.
database through to the user interface. “We
chose Microsoft because we felt it was a The media player is built on Windows
mature, reliable software platform for our Presentation Foundation and the Microsoft

5. “We expect to penetrate .NET Framework 3.5. Vukunet server-to- pace, which required following a very
server communication is buffered by rigorous Agile development methodology.
a market that is 10 times Microsoft Message Queuing technology in We were able to do this successfully using
the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating the entire Microsoft Visual Studio Team
the size of our display system. System development system. This helped
solutions market.” our team develop code, conduct unit and
Gaining a Partner system testing, and create automatic builds
Pierre Richer, NEC needed to choose an external solution of the code for the testing and production
President and Chief Operating Officer,
provider to contribute development environments in a rapid manner.”
NEC Display Solutions of America
services for Vukunet, so it turned to Project
Leadership Associates (PLA), a Microsoft Benefits
Gold Certified Partner. NEC expects that Vukunet will reduce costs
and boost effectiveness for network
“We chose Project Leadership because of operators and for advertisers and agencies.
its expertise on the Microsoft platform,” As a result, the company anticipates
says Corcoran. “We felt we were pushing capturing a significant share of an
the boundaries of what the Web can do, expanding market, raising both its revenues
and so we wanted a provider with both the and profits.
knowledge and a strong relationship with
Microsoft so that any development issues Expected to Boost Revenues, Expand the
could be resolved quickly. Project Market
Leadership really came through for us.” NEC entered the digital place-based
advertising market to boost the revenues
The PLA team managed the project from and margins of its display solutions
start to finish and provided the technical business unit. Without disclosing details
leadership on the application. The PLA about NEC’s business plans, Richer
team worked with NEC resources as well as confirms that the Microsoft-based solution
other third-party firms to design the enables the company to do just that.
Vukunet and Advuku Web applications, the
Vukunet and content management system “We expect to penetrate a market that is 10
player, and their integration with multiple times the size of our display solutions
third-party Web services. Using a market,” he says. “Moreover, because this
combination of onshore and offshore segment of the advertising industry has
development resources, the team been held back by manual processes for so
developed and deployed the application long, we expect that the automation and
quickly. real-time data delivery that we introduce
will actually expand the market by as much
“This was one of the most exciting custom as 500 percent.”
application projects in our company’s
history,” says Gaurav Issar, Executive Vice Expected to Deliver the Fastest Payback
President of Software Development at in Company History
Project Leadership Associates. “We had to Richer says that NEC sees the service-based
understand NEC’s vision and translate it solution as going beyond increasing
into a custom Web application that was revenues and delivering higher margins
easy to use, scalable, and ahead of than the company’s traditional hardware
anything in the market. We had to design business. As a result, NEC expects the
and build this application at a very fast solution to pay for itself in just under two

6. “For the first time, years, a bold target for the company and its will maintain complete control over what
industry. “We expect a much faster payback plays on their screens and when—while
advertisers in this space on Vukunet than is typical for NEC,” says eliminating the need to have IT personnel
Richer. “NEC has a very aggressive target download that content or install and
will have the information for its return on investment in this maintain media players for it.
they need when they revolutionary Web-based tool. It is the
convergence of technology and business Provides Daily Proof-of-Play Reports
need it to make better opportunity that is making it possible.” Among the most significant benefits to
advertisers and agencies will be the daily
business decisions.” The company’s success in the digital place- proof-of-play information. Proof-of-play
Pierre Richer, based advertising market, and its expansion information is uploaded to Vukunet in logs
President and Chief Operating Officer, of that market, will also spur an increase in taken directly from the PCs that manage
NEC Display Solutions of America the company’s display solutions business. the displays, and is then accessed through
“Growth in this market means that more the advertisers’ dashboards on Advuku.
screens will be needed to display more Advertisers can use the information to
content, generating more revenue and confirm that they are being charged only
profits for network owners,” says Richer. when their content runs properly. Logs are
“It’s a win-win for NEC and our customers.” encrypted on the players to ensure that
networks cannot provide misleading data.
Accelerates Processes, Increases That information, combined with the
Effectiveness dashboard information that monitors
NEC has high expectations for Vukunet in impressions, budgets, demographics, and
part because of the significant benefits that campaign geography, allows advertisers to
the solution brings to advertisers. For do even more.
example, it will greatly accelerate the
process of identifying potential venues Explains Richer, “For the first time,
for specific clients and their campaigns. advertisers in this space will have the
What was once a process of manual information they need when they need it to
research and scores of phone calls, taking make better business decisions. By knowing
days or weeks to complete, will now be exactly what content has played where,
accomplished in minutes. what impressions it has generated, and at
what cost, advertisers can adjust their
As a result, agencies can reduce their costs campaigns to maximize their results. Until
while delivering faster service to their now, they generally received this
clients. That service will be faster and more information too late to act on it.”
effective; for example, agencies or
advertisers will now be able to choose not
only specific venues for their content, but
also the specific displays within those
venues on which their content will run.
Network operators will gain similar
benefits. They will now extend their reach
to the national advertising market without
having to expand their sales staffs, and do
so with inventory information that is more
up-to-date than previously possible. They

7. For More Information Microsoft Solutions for the
For more information about Microsoft Manufacturing Industry
products and services, call the Microsoft Manufacturing enterprises must compete in
Sales Information Center at (800) 426- an increasingly global environment.
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Success depends on finding ever-greater
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- efficiencies throughout the enterprise,
2495. Customers in the United States and while developing a greater agility to react
Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing to local and global market opportunities.
can reach Microsoft text telephone These challenges are best answered with
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. technology from Microsoft and its partners.
Outside the 50 United States and Microsoft-based solutions offer much-
Canada, please contact your local needed value to manufacturers, which are
Microsoft subsidiary. To access under increasing pressure to generate
information using the World Wide Web, greater returns on the assets that they have
go to: employed. This focus on efficiency scales
www.microsoft.com across all the critical functional areas—from
getting products to market faster to
For more information about Project streamlining the supply chain, optimizing
Leadership Associates, call (312) 441- the manufacturing operations, and
0077 or visit the Web site at: generating new revenue streams.
www.projectleadership.net
For more information about Microsoft
For more information about NEC Display solutions for the manufacturing industry,
Solutions products and services, call (866) go to:
NEC-MORE or visit the Web site at: www.microsoft.com/resources/manufacturing
www.necdisplay.com
Software and Services − Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis
• Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Services
− Windows Server 2008 R2 − Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Services
Enterprise − Windows Communication Foundation
• Microsoft Visual Studio − Windows Presentation Foundation
− Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
• Technologies Partners
− Bing Maps • Project Leadership Associates
− Microsoft Message Queuing 4.0
− Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
− Microsoft Silverlight 3
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published February 2010