The Benefits of TV Ticker Software for Your Business

Just like the ticker you see crawling along the bottom of the TV screen, delivering headlines and updated information when you’re watching the news, a desktop ticker can appear on screens within your organization to keep everyone informed about important news that relates to your company.

The scrolling desktop ticker is one of the many features of DeskAlerts – a powerful internal communications software solution. It lets you scroll a band of text along a part of you're your employees’ PC screens which they can click on to find out further information.

It’s designed to appear in a narrow window on the screen – usually along the bottom, but you can set it to appear along the top or the middle – whatever works best for your circumstances.

You can also send it to any other screens in your organization, such as TV screens or digital billboards to keep people informed throughout your buildings

How text scrolling software works

The types of content that you send are only limited by your imagination. You can use it to send a long message with a lot of information that keeps scrolling across employees’ computer screens, or you can deploy it to deliver breaking news, reminders, or requests.

Whatever important corporate information you need to share with your people, you can share with the scrolling ticker feed. It’s a great way to communicate because it cuts through all the other “noise” in the communications space, and is delivered in a way that stands out and gets their attention.

Ticker news feed designed so your workers can scan the headlines appearing before them while they work in other software programs.

The desktop ticker is completely customizable and you can control the audience. You may choose to send certain messages to the entire organization, or you may opt for a custom audience, for example, a specific work team or those working in a particular region or office.

You can even decide how often the messages are shown and when they are shown: you can deliver them instantly, or set them to appear at some point in the future.

The ticker can be used to send scrolling news, follow-ups and updates to articles and links to your internal communications resources such as an intranet, Sharepoint, corporate social network sites and so on.

The sophisticated metrics panel in DeskAlerts will let you see which of your employees have seen the messages and if anyone has missed them. These are delivered in real-time so you can instantly see how effective your campaign has been.

When to use ticker software

There are numerous benefits to using a scrolling ticker. You can improve your overall internal communications, boost employee engagement, improve corporate knowledge, keep your workforce up-to-date no matter if they are all in one building or spread out around the globe, share your important achievements and more.

The scrolling ticker is a unique delivery method for internal communications messaging, and appears in such a way that your employees aren’t completely disrupted: they can see the information you are sending without having to stop what they are doing to be informed.

The sorts of information you can share via a scrolling ticker feed on your employees’ desktops include:

• Breaking news headlines about your company or the industry that you operate in.
• Links to your company’s latest media releases, website updates, or blog posts.
• Emergency communications and warnings.
• Important IT information that affects many users such as system outages and status updates.
• Reminders about important policies or procedures.
• Updates on important corporate projects.
• Reminders about upcoming events.
• Reminders about looming deadlines.
• Information about product changes or specifications.
• Share information about inventory or stock levels.
• Reinforce key messages from your marketing campaigns.
• Government and regulatory announcements that affect your company or industry.
• Updates on your competitors’ activities.
• Performance updates about your company or individual teams.
• Reward and recognition of staff excelling at their jobs.
• Learning and education opportunities to improve workforce knowledge.

Benefits of scrolling ticker software

When you improve corporate communication you improve morale and engagement, which in turn can boost your company’s profitability and productivity.

Some of the benefits include:

•   Less stressful way to receive information for employees compared to more invasive pop-up notifications
•   You can continuously update people on evolving news or situations
•   Several different messages can be fed into the scrolling ticker allowing you to communicate on different topics at once
•   Hyperlinks on scrolling ticker stories can drive your employees to your company intranet or internet sites to read more details
•   You can also link people to blogs, forums and any other under-utilized company resources
•   It’s a great way to reach staff who are immersed in their work and should not be distracted but may need to be able to quickly glance at important information – for example, nurses in hospitals.
•   When used in conjunction with other channels and tools it can help to establish a hierarchy of message severity, for example, you can send pop-up notifications for more urgent communications, while the ticker can be used for important but not time-sensitive communications.
•   You have real-time reporting on your employee interactions with the scrolling ticker so that you can gather essential metrics.
•   It is easy to update and you can send new information quickly
• The ticker can run as often or as seldom as you like – you can have it continuously scrolling on employees’ screens, run it at specific intervals during the day, or use it on an ad-hoc, as-needed basis.
• You can even decide where you would like it to appear on employees’ screens so you can maximize the benefits specific to your company’s needs.

Scrolling tickers take only 4% of the desktop space, so they won't distract employees and won't add to information overload.

How organizations use scrolling ticker software

Different businesses in different industries all have their own unique communication needs. Here are some of the ways that our real-life clients use the DeskAlerts scrolling ticker in their businesses.

1. Mitigating the HelpDesk overload in Topdanmark with news ticker

DeskAlerts Client Topdanmark – an insurance company based in Denmark – has been using DeskAlerts to broadcast system information to its users with scrolling ticker messages to inform employees about system outages or other important events that impact the work process.

Having the notification system in place helps Topdanmark to mitigate the helpdesk overload by informing the workforce in a timely manner.

According to Topdamnark’s Bo B. Jorgensen, the company has information monitors placed in several locations around its headquarters where it broadcasts alerts and/or news in case of system breakdowns or other information affecting peoples’ daily work.

“It has helped the IT department to communicate system-related information to all our users in a fast way, which has eased the workload of our helpdesk a lot during the system failures,” he says.

2. Improving internal communications in Hopital du Valais with scrolling news software

Another organization that is using the scrolling ticker to improve its internal communications is Hôpital du Valais – a healthcare organization from Switzerland.

The Hôpital du Valais was looking for an easy-to-use solution to deliver targeted notifications to employees. The organization invested in DeskAlerts and makes use of the scrolling ticker tape message function to deliver information about various incidents and maintenance activities to affected employees.

With this system in place, the hospital gained a dedicated channel to inform employees about outages and incidents – even in the event where email and telephone communications had gone down.

According to Leo Kalbermatten, the Chef Operations IT, DeskAlerts is easy to use and the message delivery is quite fast.

“The scope of alert is easy to configure via Active Directory groups and organizational units,” he said.

“All working users have the right information at the right time via the broadcast feature. In case of incidents and maintenance activities, we can inform our customers rapidly. This is an easy to use and cost-effective alerting tool,” he said.

Read more case studies.

Updated in 2022.