One of the biggest challenges facing today’s integrators is the shift from selling boxes to selling home technology services.
The new emergence of cloud-based remote management systems in the past couple of years has already begun to help facilitate this shift.
These new systems are built specifically for providing remote support to smart homeowners and are equipped with features for monitoring, management and troubleshooting issues from a distance.
Providing new assurance services to homeowners is now more viable and affordable than ever before. At the same time, these new services are not only about getting recurring monthly revenue (RMR); they’re a solution to a real problem in the smart home space.
Growing Number of Devices Creates Need
The pain point that quantifies the need for remote management in the first place is the growing number of electronics entering a home that require support.
This is a problem that I personally experienced. Prior to becoming a start-up founder, I lived amongst hundreds of connected devices that had been initially installed in my home by an integration company.
Whilst most of the time the devices made my life easier, every so often something would go wrong which would make life nearly impossible in my own home.
I didn’t have the information – or patience – to solve the issue myself. I’d call my integration company and schedule the next available appointment for an on-site visit.
I hated the process; it was expensive and inconvenient for everyone. This is the premise of why I founded a start-up that provides the infrastructure for remote managed services.
6 Pain Points Remote Management Solves
- Something Will Go Wrong: With a high number of electronics in a home that hook on to the network it isn’t whether something will go wrong – it’s when something will go wrong. Addressing how device problems get fixed from the get-go is an important discussion to ensure a smoother troubleshooting process. It’s the Home Assurance policy for a house that’s already burning.
- No Information = No Service: Each piece of technology has a different process for providing information. Remote management in its simplest form provides a unified view of device and network information that is accessible from a distance. The information can then be used to offer a service. Without access to the information, there is no service.
- End of Bits and Bobs: Some are still using a “two-soup-cans-and-a-string” approach to their monitoring systems. These systems include different bits of software pieced together to facilitate remote external access. This could be TeamViewer and a PC on the network. A centralized cloud based system ends the need to use software bits and pieces.
- Costly On-Site Visits: With the cost of remote management solutions going down, what is often disregarded is the enormous cost saving these solutions yield. Scheduling on-site visits costs time and resources. If integrators can use remote network management to reduce the number of visits to a site – they’re already saving.
- Employee Capital: It’s not just diminished truck roll. Junior employees can nowadays perform the trivial troubleshooting; as an advanced skillset is no longer required. This reduces the need to send expensive network engineers to sites, and frees up the time of a company’s most valuable employee resources.
- Unhappy Customers: “The amount of customer satisfaction [that comes from] solving an issue in real-time is unbelievable.” — JJ Canon, Digital Delight. When one of your customers calls you with a problem likely they’re already not very happy. Solving the problem remotely right while customer is on the phone, will certainly leave a better impression.
This Is Much Bigger than RMR
The implementation of a remote management system makes for happy customers as much as happy installers.
For a long time, the term RMR has remained at the center of any remote management discussion.
RMR directly refers to the benefits received after the job has been done. It does not address why the consumer needed the job to be done in the first place.
Professional support for homes with complex IT is a real need – and the number of homes that have that need is only to grow in the years ahead. Understanding the problem behind is key to reaping the benefits.
Domenico Crapanzano is CEO & Founder of Domotz, the leader in network monitoring and network management systems for integration companies and IT professionals. Domotz solutions are used to power remote tech support in 90 countries around the world. Domotz’s Fing, free network scanning application has over 15 million downloads and has been used to discover more than 3 billion IoT devices. Visit www.domotz.com or join the conversation @domotz on Twitter.
