A residential automation requires a significant investment. It is preferable that integrators make a logical budget rather than make a bad home automation to attract the customer with low costs.
Richard Santa
Although it has grown in recent years, the integration of systems for a residential environment is still considered unknown in Latin America. This phenomenon is not only among customers and users of this technology, since among the same integrators there are those who do not have enough knowledge and end up making mistakes that affect the result and, in the end, the market in general.
AVI LATINOAMÉRICA spoke with Aníbal Cardona, Commercial Manager of High Class Technology, a Colombian company that has been in the residential automation market for 10 years and was born in order to make aesthetic integration between technology and architecture. Today it is undergoing a process of transition to the use of environmentally friendly technologies.
Aníbal Cardona has extensive knowledge of home automation. As one of the founders of the company, he was in charge of researching the technologies present in the market to identify the technology that was robust, stable and reliable, with products that had to do with the finish of the interior design, a flaw that he could identify in the Colombian market at that time.
"People only saw the technology, the touchscreens, the speakers, but none of the companies offered at the time an aesthetic integration between technology and architecture. That's how the idea of creating a company that was in a position to offer this type of service was born then and we started looking for a name."
Market perception
With his experience in the market, our guest assured that home automation still remains unknown and primary. He stressed that this problem comes from the same integrators of the industry, who in many cases do not have sufficient knowledge about the technical conditions of an integration, the appropriate equipment and in some cases the price is not indicated.
"We recently did a market study and observed that competitor quotes do not involve the wiring that needs to be, nor the proper connectors that the system requires. They also do not take into account the appropriate speakers, nor the most suitable current protectors. We saw that the smallest and lowest-end processors on the market are quoted. We analyze that labor is the factor that most ignorance or ignorance has the environment, because a fair price is not charged that at least allows to support a structure. "
He added that as part of the study they did a survey with users on finished products, which were served by other companies, and 80-90% said they didn't want automation, that they didn't need it, that they had already tried it in past years and it didn't work for them.
"Customers really express this because the systems were not effectively implemented. The client, having a system that is not ergonomic, nor automated, nor functional, because it is partial or poorly conceived, ends up having a system that he does not use and that therefore discredits. If in other countries it works, here too the conditions are given for it to work."
Market challenges
In order to overcome these difficulties and contribute to the growth of the residential automation market, High Class Technology has set interesting challenges that serve as an example for the entire sector. The first of these is to professionalize the industry, from academic, scientific, administrative and real project management aspects.
To achieve this, the objective is to educate the market, both in the guild of recently graduated professionals who do not know the environment, and customers, because they usually take the price as a decisive value and buy what they find more economical. But they don't really know what they're acquiring in terms of quality, shelf life or efficiency.
Aníbal Cardona mentioned that "we want to improve and there is a lot to work with the home automation market. For that we set up a department dedicated to customer service and we are in the process of ISO certification, we are certified in CEDIA and InfoComm, and we continue working on more certifications to provide a service at the height that each client deserves".
The second challenge is to stop home automation from being seen as a solution only for society with greater purchasing power, and to begin to offer solutions that allow reaching people who are in the middle class, who live in small apartments, strata 3 and 4.
The third challenge is not to persuade customers to acquire a solution with low prices, punishing budgets and, of course, the technology to be used. "An automation requires an investment. We in the company are becoming very professional in these issues of real budgets and we prefer to talk about a logical budget rather than make a bad home automation".
And fourthly, it is to strengthen relations with builders and architectural firms, so that home automation is included within the projects and is not considered as an external technology to your construction proposal.
Towards green technologies
As part of the evolution of the industry, High Class Technology is implementing changes in order to generate solutions that are friendly to the environment. Recently, on the subject of lighting, they migrated to clean technologies known as Soft. They are renewable products that do not involve degradable elements that affect the environment such as metals, coppers or aluminum.
"We make structures in what they call crown to crown. These structures are used in Europe with renewable products, and so luminaires can be included to be part of the architecture, and having no chassis do not produce wear for the environment. We evolved the lighting to the soft trend that means soft with nature and the architecture of the house. We care about lighting in an environmentally friendly way, thinking beyond the LED bulb," he said.
In addition, on the subject of audio they migrated to technologies that are handled with iPad and Smartphone applications, and involved invisible speakers, which are also products designed for environmentally friendly renewable energies, because they do not have a metal chassis or copper membranes, instead they use natural membranes. These products are not seen because they are inside the walls, in the drywall.
