Admittedly the path to reinvention began just three years ago, but now following the CEDIA Expo 2024 show in Denver, Nice North America CEO Emanuel Bertolini says the company is right where it is supposed to be in the smart home space.
Recounting the privately held, Italian company’s CEDIA Expo 2024 booth, Bertolini notes that Nice had featured several products that represent its approach to innovation and commitment to dealers.
“Looking at this year’s CEDIA, we showcased a greater range and depth in our product line than in previous years. Next year, you can expect even more innovation from Nice North America. Our focus has been on our customers and ensuring we prioritize the products that meet their needs,” comments Bertolini.
“Time to market is another key focus for us; we’re accelerating our timelines and investing heavily in innovation, which I believe is essential in this industry. Innovation is how we can truly differentiate ourselves.”
Smart Home Platform a Core Focus of the Company Pushing Forward
One of the new solutions from Nice is its latest smart home operating system (OS). Bertolini says that Nice has a tremendous amount of respect for the manufacturers that make up the home control and automation market, but as someone that is competitive, he wants Nice to be a market leader.
2024 Lighting Controls and Fixtures Report
Lightapalooza took place in late February, and the growth of the event has mirrored the rapid ascension lighting fixtures and controls.Download your copy now!
“I have great respect for the established players in the control field; they’ve led the industry for a long time. We’re on our own path, with the ambition to lead,” says Bertolini. “We’re bringing to the market innovative features and new ways for homeowners to interact with their systems.”
Supporting the innovation that Nice North America is bringing to the smart home market, Bertolini states that its 8.9 OS was developed in-house by its engineering team in Massachusetts. By using their own engineering team he continues, it gives the company an advantage whenever it updates the platform because it does not have to rely on third parties to update its software.
AI Has Been Huge for Pushing New Innovations for Nice
Elaborating on Nice’s efforts to keep its product development internal, Jim Poder, chief technology officer for Nice North America, says that as a manufacturer the goal is to develop products that appeal to both dealers and their customers. Poder acknowledges that dealers prioritize performance and reliability so they can serve as technology curators for their customers that also expect reliable performance.
Explaining how the Nice North America engineering team is fostering the company’s innovation, Poder says that Nice is employing the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence to power OS 8.9’s unique features.
Supporting Nice North America’s new OS 8.9 are two new touchscreens. Photo/Bob Archer
“AI is coming to the forefront, natural language processing and machine learning was challenging, so you had to build a hierarchy for an event. Now, there are toolkits to enable this. This allows engineers to get past those building blocks,” explains Poder.
“The earliest days [of the smart home industry] had command lists, now the AI is learning the verbosity of the speaker [homeowner]. Some people are going to be exacting when they speak, and some people are going to be ambiguous, and they will be frustrated. When you look at the smart home when you create scenes, they want this, this and this.
“It’s programmatic, but for the rest of the people, they wish the light was on, but when they leave the home, they make sure the lights are off and the garage door is off. It’s rambling bits of information. It’s those experiences we want to enable. I want to make the system smart.”
Nice Points to Sonos Integration as Preferred Approach for Updates
Another of the challenges with enabling this level of smart home intuitiveness is the cost he says. It can be done in the cloud Poder says for example, but there was a study done that he cites that estimates that 8% of the power generated goes to data centers.
Poder notes another challenge is the uniqueness of each smart home system. Because of these challenges, he says it is important for dealers to work with homeowners to see how these systems can solve their lifestyle problems.
“The reason why people buy these systems is to create frictionless experiences in their homes,” underscores Poder. “To breakthrough into the mainstream is to make those experiences more appealing to a larger market. Maybe I start as a security customer, then attach garage door opener, then they enter more into the ecosystem and understanding the customer and what they want.”
Another example he points out its Nice North America’s integration of Sonos.
“We are going into a couple of different directions. One, our integration with Sonos. When Sonos opened the APIs we jumped on that. It’s something our customers and dealers wanted. It was their willingness to open up and we wanted to take advantage of that,” recalls Poder. “Voice navigation was a similar process. We finally felt we were able to provide that experience.”
Poder also notes that in addition to the introduction of OS 8.9, the company is bringing to market two new controllers, two new touchscreens, and it recently launched its new video doorbell.
“In the next year we are refreshing our security line with panels, sensors; we have two new garage door openers; we have some gate controllers for residential and in the commercial market we have our pro AV products,” he adds.
“We have a dealer app [Apple iOS] that allows lidar in an iPhone to map homes to then allow users to see a representation of the home where their devices are located. In doing so, it provides value to provide a representation on all UIs [user interfaces] to use it as a control mechanism.”
Don’t Worry, Nice Hasn’t Forgotten About Its Audio Portfolio
To this point Nice North America’s revitalization has been primarily focused on its OS 8.9 platform, but the company has not overlooked its audio components.
Paul Williams, global managing director for Nice North America, says the company’s investment in the channel includes reenergizing its presence in the home audio market. As part of Nice’s commitment to the smart home industry, Williams reiterates Bertolini’s emphasis on dealer support.
“That’s what we are trying to do, we are a B-to-B [business-to-business] solution, we are not trying to be B-to-C [business-to-consumer]. The reality is it is hard to be a B-to-C company. We have to make sure we have good speakers. We can’t just slap a name on them. We must make them a better speaker,” admits Williams. “Let’s design speakers to make sure they sound right.”
Nice North America’s audio products includes a choice of outdoor loudspeakers. Photo/Bob Archer
Williams states that to further protect its dealers Nice is being cautious on how the company conducts business. Explaining the company’s renewed approach, he says there is distribution and there is direct-to-dealer. Williams says that dealers are now not going to find the brand is not available to everyone, and to help ensure its new sales channel philosophy, Proficient is now for distribution.
Additionally, Williams continues, the higher quality product line is now under the Nice brand, not SpeakerCraft.
“SpeakerCraft, Panamax, and Elan is now Nice,” Williams points out. “We are going through the rebranding, so we are making the changes. Summarizing the [dealer] loyalty in a nutshell: Build a good speaker, and two, protect the dealers with go-to-market, good prices. We believe those things will win the dealer back.”
Patience, Communication Key to Winning Over CEDIA Channel, Williams Says
Williams and the Nice North America team also realize that to regain the trust of the smart home industry it will take some time to win over dealers. He and the Nice North America team know that at shows like CEDIA Expo attendees walk by the company’s booth without any idea of what is the company is currently doing in the market. To accomplish its goal of educating dealers on Nice’s new market initiatives the company is working on improving its industry communications.
“There are some things we can do better and more of, but it has gone well. We’ve gotten feedback, and our name continues to come up more. This gets me excited that people are becoming salespeople for our company that aren’t dealers for the company. That is a good bell weather of the communication of what we are doing,” boasts Williams.
“There’s been a fundamental shift in what we are doing with product development and more, but there are always things we need to do better. From a leadership position on down, we are happy with the results we are seeing. It took time, but it took the right amount of time. We could have done it faster, but we would have left some people behind. We are seeing the results from a corporate level to where we are satisfied in what we are seeing. We see future growth.”
With a firm gameplan in place Bertolini and the rest of the Nice North America executive team are resolute in the direction the company is heading, which is built around enabling its dealers’ success.
“These are professionally installed systems. This is an industry of trust. If I’m the end user and my dealer did my system, I am going to call that same dealer and that same brand. The industry relies on trust, knowing each other and the fact these are professionally installed systems, so that means the dealer is my customer,” maintains Bertolini.
“My customer is the dealer. The CI channel is my customer, and we are committed this. We have no intent to step into dealers’ relations with consumers. I don’t want to step into relations that are built on trust. The systems are custom, so every system is custom, these are not basic systems. We are strongly committed to our CI dealer channel. We are focusing on how to make them more successful because if they are successful, then we are successful. It’s a joint venture.”
If Anything Remains Consistent, It’s Nice’s Commitment to Veterans
Nice North America may have implemented recent structural changes that impact its go-to-market strategies, but its work to help improve the lives of wounded veterans and first responders remains strong and consistent.
Since the beginnings of the Gary Sinise Foundation (GSF) the Carlsbad, Calif.-based company and participating dealers have helped the charity to provide more than 90 disabled veterans with adapted smart homes. Working with several high-profile companies GSF through its R.I.S.E (Restoring independence, Supporting Empowerment) program provides families of disabled veterans with housing that is custom designed to each recipient’s specific needs.
For its part Nice North America donates products that include loudspeakers, home controllers, remote controls, and motorized shading. Local integrators donate their time and expertise by working with these veterans to ensure these adapted smart homes support veterans and their families to improve the quality of their lives.
Individuals can participate in the support GSF’s efforts to give back through the charity organization’s “Buy a Brick” program. As part of this program, anyone that buys a brick can have the brick inscribed with a personal message to a veteran’s family. The brick will be incorporated into that family’s adapted smart home build at the flagpole base of their home, and that donation will be used to help with the cost of the construction of the home.
A small brick (4 inches x 8 inches) costs $100 and a large brick (8 inches x 8 inches) costs $250.
Army Sargent Dennet Oregon raising the flag at his new adapted smart home in Southern California during a ceremony held by the Gary Sinise Foundation. Photo/Bob Archer
If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!