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Leviton Connected Home

HDHomes.tv has launched a new video from Leviton manufacturing on the connected home.  Dealers interested in showing Leviton videos on their websites may sign-up for an HDHomes.tv video player here. ($20/mn month-to-month subscription with no set-up fees or hidden costs)

Retail Takes on "Smart Homes"

Anyone seen this sight in your local Home Depot yet?   A friend of mine, Fabian who is an integrator in Atlanta, GA captured these shots in his local Home Depot. 

It's certainly interesting to see Home Depot partner with Control4 and HAI in this effort.  Now that they've started it, I wish them all the best.  But I can't help but remember the day 6 years ago when I first saw "Nabu" home automation products show up on the shelves of my local CompUSA store.  I'll freely admit that I was naive enough to be worryed when that happened.  Ok, it's not something that I'm proud of, but I really was nervous at the time.  I wondered what CompUSA's entrance into the marketplace meant for the health of my small business.  Well I had a lot to learn back then, and I'm certain I still have a lot to learn.  But the lesson I learned from the Nabu experience is that "shelf space doesn't assure mind share".  The sale of Nabu products at CompUSA did not go well.  I've attempted (unsuccesfully) in subsequent years to find out the real numbers, but suffice it to say that sales were less than stellar. Of course hindsight is always 20/20 and now we are tempted to say, "well DAH" of course it didn't work. 

But many things have changed in the market place since then and now we are talking Home Depot, not CompUSA.  So for those of you who may be very concerned about Home Depot's move let me remind you, "shelf space does not assure mind share". 

In our growing market of home technologies there are lots of opportunites.  Some of us an integrators may still be naive enough to think that we can accomodate all the opportunities.  I'm quite certain that is not a likely reality.  As our market grows we will see an ever widening variety of customer types.  A certain (and growing) percentage of them will be retail customers. 

If you currently run a retail business this is good news.

If you currently do NOT run a retail business this is still good news.  Because most of these customers ( at least for now) are NOT your customers.  Most of them don't have the propensity to pay for SERVICE related activities which I suspect makes up the lion share of your revenue.  So what this retail model does for you and for the rest of the industry is provide FREE ADVERTISING.  It's an "awareness campaign" that none of us could dream of financing.

"But", you say, "what about those customers who really do want to pay someone to design, install, configure, and service their home automation solutions?"  Yea, I know, if they innocently go to Home Depot and buy all the boxes, then go home to install it and get frustrated with the experience this will turn into a negative awareness campaign for our industry.  I agree! 

And apparently so does Control4 and HAI.  They have provided an "in-store kiosk" for customers to look up a local integrator to help with the installation.

  I was really intrigued when I found this out.  I think this has the potential of being an awesome solution.  It allows the DIY customer to buy the boxes that he/she wants to do the project themselves if they are so inclined, but also offers our future customers (the ones who value our services) to find us.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, I still have a lot to learn so I guess time will tell if this is really a good solution.  But for now I say "Bravo" to Control4 and HAI for working on a creative option that helps grow the market place and simultaneously supports their core integrator service providers through lead- generation and marketing.

Thanks Fabian for sending the photos!!

Home Automation Standards

I just found this video interview (I don't know why it took so long) between two interesting people....Bob Metcalf founder of 3Com and Eric Smith co-founder and CTO of Control4 talking about Home Automation and how it relates to the "standards" in the PC world.  Very interesting conversation captured and hosted by PodTech.  Check out the video below....

Going Retro In Style

I've been collecting some "oldie but goodie" pictures of technology in homes that I've visited lately.  Sometimes it's really good to be reminded of where we came from.  On those rare days when I'm tempted to think that it might be nice to go back to the good ole' analog days, pictures like this Surveillance and Intercom System help to shack me out of my stupor.....Black and White TV???? No DVR for my security cameras????? No Cat5 wire????  Go back to the "good ole' days"????  What was I thinking????

Digital Home Case Study

I spoke with 11 integrators this week as part of a case study that I'm doing on Home Logic and Bay Audio.  Seth is right, SMALL is the NEW BIG!  What do I mean by small?  I mean acting small NOT thinking small.  Acting small means that you, answer all your emails promptly, return phone calls quickly, find the answers promptly, follow-up on your commitments, under promise and over deliver.  These are things that all successful integration companies do.  These are the small things that build trust. 

So if you are a manufacturer trying to sell widgets through this integration channel you MUST understand these facts about your integrator customers.  The successful ones ALL ACT SMALL. 

So how can you help them, how can you reinforce their efforts, how can you ACT SMALL so that you build trust with your integrator customers?

Well, according to Bay Audio and Home Logic dealers you:

1. Have a knowledgeable person always availble to answer the phone
2. Prepare and distribute comprehensive integration manuals/white papers as tools for the dealers
   1. These should be free
   2. They should cover all sub-systems that your product is likely to integrate with, EVEN if you don't manufacture that sub-system.
3. Need visionary leaders that are passionate about helping dealers succeed, about this industry, and (oh yea) about the products you manufacture.
4. Hold free business building seminars that cover subjects like:
   1. Accounting
   2. Sales
   3. Marketing
   4. Employee Management
5. MUST have a Rep. firm and/or Distributor that echos your "ACT SMALL" corporate culture.
6. ARE ALWAYS HONEST!  (Even when honesty means admitting a mistake, a late product release, or faulty software/firmware/hardware)

This is the short list of items that these 11 dealers brought up as they bragged about Bay Audio and Home Logic.  I've never witnessed such loyalty.  I guess it also helps that all the dealers were also unanimuse in stating that their profits margins have all gone UP as a result of partnering with these manufacturers.  WOW!  Small IS the new BIG!!

If you are an integrator considering your manufacturer options....choose wisely

Windows Home Server

Many of you have no doubt heard about Microsoft's forthcoming Home Server product.  Bill Gates formally announced it at the 2007 CES.  There's quite a bit of hype about how this product will be the center of the the "digital home". I played with it a bit at CES and was impressed with many of the promised feature sets. 
Like most Microsoft products there are companies already developing complimentary products to Home Server.  One such company is Embedded Automation.

Chris Lanier has a good post on how Embedded Automation's "mControl" software will work within the Microsoft Home Server platform.

EI Goes Retail

   +  = Anti-Channel OR Good Market Exposure???

Over 400 dealers have invested in Exceptional Innovation thus far by taking the required training.  Now those dealers find themselves competing against big box retailer Best Buy owned Magnolia.  CRN reports that the intial role out will only happen in 2 California Magnolia stores so there's not much for many dealers to worry about yet.  It will be very interesting to see how Magnolia does with EI's product lines. And it will be interesting how EI balances support for their channel customers and their new retail partner.

Monster Cable Gets Into Home Automation?

Yes you read it correctly...Monster is making a play into the "Control/Automation" space.  I saw this at CEDIA briefly and just had to smile.  They have "control system" products and "lighting system" products.

The control products currently are universal remotes that either control home theater components or home theater & lighting components.  The home theater remote is configured and programmed much the same was as Logitech's Harmony remotes.  That could be because apparently Monster has partnered with Logitech and is using the same code and database.

The lighting products are brought to market through a partnership with Leviton who is a very respected manufacturer in many industries and who has been a very "Channel Friendly" company in the Home Automation space for a long time.  You can buy their home automation products through distributors like Home Controls.

Monster's products however are evidently not designed to be particularly "channel friendly".  Anyone can pick them at Amazon.com

User Experiences

I had lunch yesterday with a past client and her husband.  They built a beautiful home in Sandpoint, ID and they asked us to design and provide all the technology solutions. (Lighting Control, Distributed Audio, Home Theater, HVAC Control, Security Integration, Home Automation features, and surveillance)  It was roughly a $250k project.

I continue to stay in touch with them (as I do many of our past homeowner clients).  Yesterdays lunch served as a strong reminder why I go through the effort of staying in contact.

THEY HAVE A LOT TO TEACH ME!!!!!

After the fun small talk, they got down to business by very graciously reminded me of the money that they spent with my firm and then frankly asked why it was not standard procedure for our firm to provide a simple USER MANUAL for the operation of this wonderful system.  OUCH!  Like many of the clients that we serve, this is only a season home for them.  So when they return to this house after months away, there are some basic functions that they struggle to remember how to operate.  A simple User Manual would help them out tremendously.

I acknowledged their point as a valid one and promised to work on a solution for them.

CANDIDLY THOUGH.....IT's NOT EASY TO ACCOMPLISH. 

It got me to thinking about why we spend SO MUCH TIME and marketing effort on procuring customers with glossy brochures, fancy websites, wonderful proposals, etc...but we rarely spend much time on supporting those customers with much documentation.  Kathy has some excellent thoughts on this same subject on her blog.   It's obviously not just our industry that approaches customers in this way.  But our industry does have some unique reasons for our failure in this regard.

All to often in this industry we approach each job as unique.  We like to call it "Custom".  We provide uniquely designed solutions for each clients unique needs.  RIGHT???  Well we've found that this approach is a recipt for disaster on several levels.  First, with the case in point, there is no way that we can write a User Manual for each project when each one is unique.  Even on a $250k project there is no budget for the "technical writing" required to create a User Manual. 

To solve this problem, we began several years ago to standardize our service offerings.  We began to write a User Manual into the User Interface.  We now have simple HELP menus available from every page of the touch screen interfaces so that the user can get immediate help without having to crack open a book/manual.  We were able to do this ONLY AFTER we standardized our service offering and limited the number of available options for each customer.  Instead of the options being LIMITLESS like before, we now present the options in a simple menu style format and let them choose from a finite number of standardized, designed, engineered system options. If a customer wants us to provide solutions outside our standards??? Well they need to find a different service provider.

Of course I shared much of this with my clients over lunch, and assured them that we could upgrade their system software to the newest version that now includes the User Manual options that they were seeking. 

It's amazing what we can learn when we listen to our clients and sincerely ask for their input.  Thanks to our customers we are becoming a better company.  Or at least I think we are....Maybe I should wait on the back slapping congratulations until after my next client-lunch appointment next week.

Popular downloads

I'm on the road today so I'm posting from my Treo. This news was just too good to not share immediatly. We've been tracking the downloads on the www.hdhomes.tv website since we went live last week. The responce has been incredible. We've had over 500 downloads of videos from that site in the first 5 days. This is especially exciting to us because we did no advertising. We just told a small group of industry insiders and the word has just spread.

Thanks to all of you who have viewed the videos, recommended them to others, and/or sent us comments. We'll keep working hard to improve the content and release new episodes frequently.

The next episode should be online by the end of this week.

Stay Tuned!