An Amazon Signage case study with Sun Prairie School District
Digital Signs/Displays
District Schools
Students
The Sun Prairie Area School District dramatically improved district-wide communications while significantly reducing IT support costs by implementing and standardizing their digital signage on Amazon Signage Sticks with Rise Vision. This innovative Wisconsin school district discovered that choosing the right technology solution and partnering with Amazon Business to streamline procurement, enhanced their communication capabilities and eliminated recurring technical challenges.
Sun Prairie Area School District is a dynamic K-12 district located just outside Madison, Wisconsin serving more than 8,400 students across 15 schools. Dedicated to fostering academic excellence and preparing students for the future, Sun Prairie’s leadership strives to create an inclusive and well-informed environment for every student and staff member.
As the district expanded rapidly over the last decade, it faced considerable challenges in communication. Although they implemented digital signage to improve student engagement, the initial approach had operational challenges. Managing different Content Management Software (CMS) systems made training challenging and the IT team found themselves frequently responding to issues caused by software updates to the Fire TV Stick media players. "We were spending too much time maintaining and supporting our digital signage network to keep up with Fire OS updates which triggered a reboot of our media players," explains Chou Xiong, Senior Field Technician at Sun Prairie. "With over 75 displays across our schools, we needed a more reliable solution that wouldn't consume so much of our IT resources."
Recognizing the need for a reliable and simple solution, Sun Prairie set out to improve the operations of their digital signage. The team standardized their digital signage solution with the Amazon Signage Stick as the media player and Rise Vision as the CMS. The Amazon Signage Stick, purpose built for digital signage, was an affordable media player that improved reliability, reduced support requirements, and seamlessly integrated with their CMS. The Rise Vision CMS offered an easy-to-use interface and a library of over 600 customizable templates that accelerated the team’s ability to create and deliver content.
Leveraging their Amazon Business account, Sun Prairie was also able to simplify the procurement processes dramatically and acquire all hardware through a single platform. As Xiong notes, this removed the friction of managing multiple vendors and purchase orders, granting the district clear oversight and budget control. "The partnership between Amazon Business and Amazon signage gave us a complete, end-to-end solution. We were able to procure, deploy, and manage our entire district's signage through a single, intuitive ecosystem."
The success of this implementation has opened new possibilities for Sun Prairie. "Because the Amazon Signage Stick is so affordable and easy to support, our schools are thinking about more ways they can innovate with digital signage to improve student experiences, such as wayfinding and staff communications," explains Xiong.
According to Xiong,"Digital signage can help schools improve communication, and it’s important to ensure technology solutions are intuitive and reliable to meet the needs of educators and support teams." This balance of innovation and reliability made possible thorough collaboration with trusted partners like Amazon and Rise Vision has proven key to Sun Prairie's success in transforming communications, engagement, and learning outcomes.
