CEDIA 2017 Expotential show is over. The feast is over, people are back to their offices from sunny San Diego, CA, and now is time to talk about its influence and message.

Black Orange Marketing was at the show to follow up with the current events and come up with better strategies for residential and commercial technology integrators.

So, the news of the year is that Google Home and Amazon are seriously in the smart home automation business. Amazon was the main sponsor of the CEDIA this year with its Voice Control System Alexa.

The keynote speech from Amazon featured executives from Nucleus, Crestron, and Lutron. This shows that the old players of the automation world have embraced the voice control system, invested in integration with Alexa and are going to fully promote it to technology integration world.

So, here are some takeaways for AV integrators and automation system designers/engineers.

1. Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home are really going to make the idea of the smart home popular.

One of the main problems of technology integrators is to communicate the idea of a smart home in a right way. Now, you can take advantage of the huge funds that these 2 companies will invest in educating the general public and get your customers from there.

2. Voice control is the future and already the present of home automation. Things gonna change and non-adapters will die out. Promote voice control and Voice Control Interfaces on your web page, talk about them with your clients. People are excited about this new trend. It’s easier for them to control the system with voice than remembering all the steps on the touch panel.

3. Provide and promote free in-house and in-office consultations for your clients as much as possible. Reviews under the Amazon’s free smart home consultation service show that people need and love those. In this confusing variety of smart home products, your customers will really be grateful to have a knowledgeable expert to rely on.

4. Promote yourself as Alexa and Google Home installers and experts on your web page. Those are highly searchable keywords that will bring customers to your web page and let them learn more about automation options.

5. You customers can set up the Alexa controls themselves only to some extent and only in comparingly small homes. Further than that they’ll need your help to bring together a more sophisticated system, add more skills to VUI (Voice User Interface) and provide an ongoing customer support after the installation.

To sum up, making the smart home technology available to more people is going to create a bigger need for skilled technology professionals.

Use this opportunity: train your team, provide more and better customer support, invest in better and more targeted marketing efforts and grow your business. And always remember that survives not the one who’s the strongest but the one who adapts fast.