Embedding Smart Home in Residential Building Services at Resideo Live

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4Q 2019 | IN-5695

Resideo, the residential solutions provider spun out from Honeywell a year ago, gathered its channel partners in Austin, Texas, in early December 2019 at an event they called Resideo Live to set out the company’s vision of an evolving smart home market. It previewed a raft of smart home devices alongside a new app that can be used by residents and installers to manage a set of key smart home services. Resideo has segmented its offerings into four broad services applications: Air, Energy, Water, and Security. The strategic goal is to help push smart home products and services far deeper into residences and to tightly tie that push to the home services installer channel.

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Resideo to Pull Residential Building Services into the Smart Home Ecosystem

NEWS


Resideo, the residential solutions provider spun out from Honeywell a year ago, gathered its channel partners in Austin, Texas, in early December 2019 at an event they called Resideo Live to set out the company’s vision of an evolving smart home market. It previewed a raft of smart home devices alongside a new app that can be used by residents and installers to manage a set of key smart home services. Resideo has segmented its offerings into four broad services applications: Air, Energy, Water, and Security. The strategic goal is to help push smart home products and services far deeper into residences and to tightly tie that push to the home services installer channel.

Air, Energy, Security, and Water in a Single App

IMPACT


The new Resideo Home app, introduced to its installer channel partners at the event, is essential to delivering long-term revenues for Resideo’s installer partners by fostering more regular interactions between installers and their clients. The app will also provide a conduit for installers to monitor equipment in the home and reach out to residents directly when an issue is detected. There is an additional goal to drive end-user engagement with connected services in the home. Built to include gamification as well as alerts and advice, Resideo is looking to ensure regular interactions between the app and end users. The company unveiled a host of new and expanded smart home products, setting an end of 2020 deadline to integrate support for all of them and more within the new app.

Announcements highlighted at the event by application segment included:

  • Water: Building on its acquisition of Buoy in March 2019, the Buoy Whole Home Water Controller and more recent Buoy Water Leak Detectors have been integrated into the new Resideo Home app. Using data from the Buoy controller, the app can deliver metrics on water use and flow rate, apply advanced Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to help residents better conserve water, and provide leak monitoring and valve shut off. Services are offered in a mix of free and premium subscription offerings.
  • Air: Resideo previewed its new Indoor Air Quality Monitor, which will provide real-time data to the Resideo Home app regarding air quality issues including carbon dioxide levels, particles, chemicals, and humidity to understand the air inside and do something about it. Issues can be addressed through Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) management and maintenance.
  • Energy: Resideo previewed two new smart thermostats reminiscent of the iconic 1950’s Honeywell T87 design, both of which will come to market and be integrated into the Resideo Home app in 2020. Additional functionality in the app will also support additional services, such as automating HVAC system operation in line with the home’s thermal qualities, external conditions, and end-user preference and schedules. In addition, Resideo highlighted its Remote Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance Capabilities for water heaters and furnaces with integrated devices from its LifeWhere acquisition earlier in 2019.
  • Security: In home security, Resideo extended its offerings to include a self-install, entry-level security system that leverages an all-in-one tower with an embedded camera, motion detection, and speaker that supports monitored security services. In addition, the company plans an expanded line of sensors, life safety devices, and control panels with end user replaceable cellular radios and batteries to boost operational cost efficiencies for dealers and installers. By the end of 2020, the Resideo’s ProSeries Home Security and Smart Home Platform will also be integrated into the Resideo Home app.

A Broader Understanding of Smart Home and the Smart Home Channel

RECOMMENDATIONS


Although a new standalone company, Resideo started with a significant residential footprint carried over from its days within Honeywell; the company says it has connected products in 6.5 million households, primarily in North America. As a standalone company, Resideo has struck a long-term license agreement with Honeywell to use “Honeywell Home” on some of its products. The company also has more than 110,000 million installer company partners and close to a million professional installers working with its products.

The vast majority of Resideo’s installations, however, feature non-connected devices and the company’s product line of around 20,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) reflects that traditional bias. While, unconnected residential equipment is a long-standing business, and one that continues to serve the company well, connectivity is encroaching into its traditional market—smart thermostats and self-install security systems are key examples—and Resideo needs product offerings that can compete with a growing host of consumer-focused rivals and an installer network that also embraces that shift.

At the foundation of Resideo’s new smart home strategy is the conviction that installing and maintaining many of the core systems within a home—especially the most technical, such as electricical, water, and HVAC—lay beyond its residents’ capabilities or comfort level to do themselves, but the strategy also demands a sea change in how consumers, installers, and the wider market view the smart home opportunity. The app, although supporting both residents and installers, provides more a detailed insights and control for installers through a Pro version.

The smart home market is more casually viewed through the lens of a handful of high-profile smart devices that are based around personal interaction. Voice control is a primary example, smart lighting and thermostats are others. These devices are typically self-install or primarily marketed as self-install. There are exceptions, and Nest has long aimed to connect its consumer customers with local installers. What is different with Resideo is that its focus is installer-led and on the critical networks in the home. Its strategy depends on its installer channel educating and drawing customers not only to premium connected products but also to Resideo’s specific devices.

This is what makes the Resideo Home app such an important element: the app must engage end users and simplify the management of offering residential building services in the home. The more service systems that can accessed through the single app, the more likely a resident is to expand additional applications within the home and with Resideo products. For installers, the app and Resideo’s strategy must support their ability to expand the scope of their services. Security can be extended into plumbing and energy and vice versa for other disciplines. That shifts the smart home emphasis for residential building services to installers and a closer customer/installer relationship. Although the company’s monitored security channel has long been focused on recurring revenues from their customers, it is not the same with HVAC and plumber-focused installers. Changing that customer relationship on the back of device and system connectivity is no small feat, but it is one that appreciates the increasing potential for smart home within the residential services market to fundamentally change the way many service providers will deliver and maintain customer services. It also demands installers see the transition to lower value per visit but more regular ongoing customer engagements (away from emergency and major appliance replacement and toward regular monitoring and maintenance) as a more profitable one. The ability to better understand issues as they arrive through data collected in the Resideo Home app should help installers maximize the efficiency of their truck roll overheads not only by providing real-time insights into any issue that requires attention, but also by layering additional services that can be addressed or offered by an installer during that visit.

In addition, Resideo is helping support the transition to that extended maintenance and monitoring emergency call outs and expensive truck rolls for smaller jobs by hosting support features within the Pro version of the Home app to incentivize its installer channel, including subscription revenue sharing, lead generation, and social media marketing management.

After the Austin launch there are plenty of strategy details yet to be shared, including detailed timelines, pricing, connectivity selection, and more, but it was a clear starting point for a conversation that will increasingly push smart home into new aspects of residential connectivity and management.

Resideo is working to change the habits of a long-established, sometimes slow moving, and disparate market that does not include Information Technology (IT) support and connectivity management at its heart. But it is a market ripe for development and the benefits that IoT and system connectivity can bring. If smart residential building services are not included in the market’s view of smart home today, that position will change.

 

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