by John Galante
NOW IS THE TIME to make extraordinary progress on tech
I’ve been working on this dream of the optimized TecHome in bits and pieces or full force for almost 35 years now. I didn’t start on the ground floor. I started in the basement. Or maybe the better metaphor is digging the hole for the basement—when home control was X-10 devices that worked now and then and speech recognition was MasterVoice that didn’t work at all. Still there was this foggy dream of the TecHome (or the Smart Home or Connected Home of Intelligent Home), and there were really smart, wild-eyed entrepreneurs who tilted into it.
Roadkill along the way – Amp, Molex, NAHB Smarthouse, CEBus, Microsoft, H-P, some of the biggest names in global tech made their plays and retreated. And builders, in the wake of the Smarthouse debacle, were really smart and limited their tech plays to a structured wiring can, even in the boom years of the mid-2000s.
Now the struggles for legitimacy and just plain functionality are over. Have been for five years or more. There are thousands of solid tech products for new homes and the homebuilding enterprise –from the low voltage stack to the line voltage stack to mechanical systems to major appliances to high performance building materials, from indoor to outdoors, from marketing and sales solutions to design, production and customer care solutions.
The time for builders and multifamily companies to embrace tech to make extraordinary, continuous progress on tech is before us.
It’s not a question of “if” but “how.”
From TecHome Builder the how starts with organization and process:
- Forging a strong internal home tech team that declares your company’s strategic intent with tech.
- Expanding the strategy team to include key tech platform providers.
- Deploying that team to establish and regularly refreshes your home tech merchandise assortments, standard offers, option and upgrade packaging and go-to-market strategies
- And taking that merchandise plan to the marketplace of tech vendors, with pre-determined vendor and subcontractor evaluation standards that help you move quickly from shortlist to selection.
In terms of applying tech to the homebuilding enterprise, the challenges are similar:
- Developing a strategic intent around desired results typically focused on improved efficiency and quality.
- Again, adding platform providers and integrators to your strategy circle for master planning of a solutions road map.
- And taking that plan to the marketplace of solution providers with evaluation standards that help you move quickly from shortlist to selection.
Again…
It’s not if
It’s how
It’s not when
It’s NOW!
And you and your teams can take giant steps forward at our first TecHome Builder Online Summit at the end of September. Get on the same page by taking in general sessions and vendor presentations targeted to your needs, picking among 200+ presentations and shopping 150+ vendors to begin building your shortlists.
Need help doing your pre-planning or getting your plan for the Online Summit together? Let us know!
WE REALLY WANT TO HELP YOU GO FASTER AND FURTHER WITH TECH!
John Galante
President
AE Ventures
[email protected]
Take a look at the exciting new products and applications that may change the TecHome game
in the not-so-distant future and how to know when you should get serious about activating them. Attend the TecHome Builder Online Summit for FREE.
