Allison Neves, President of A7 Advisors, shared some insights with us as a sneak peek for her presentation at the upcoming Smart Energy Summit in Austin this month.

Allison will participate on the expert panel Lessons Learned: Partnerships and Adoption of Smart Energy Solutions on Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 1:15 pm. Her panel will discuss how new business models and technologies provide opportunities to change the customer relationship and drive engagement and participation in programs.

She will be joined by the following panelists:

James McPhail, CEO, Zen Ecosystems
Spencer Moore, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Rapid Response Monitoring Services
Wannie Park, VP Corporate and Business Development, Inspire
Don Wingate, VP Microgrid Solution and Strategic Alliances, Schneider Electric

How are you optimizing smart home bundling?

The energy industry's early mistake in smart home bundling was to focus on product quantity in an effort to be the "whole home provider." Energy companies are at a disadvantage in being the "whole-home smart home" provider because giants like Amazon and Google are not only creating these products, but have the brand recognition to back them up. However, energy companies can leverage smart home products to lower cost of acquisition by wowing customers with a device and boost customer retention because customers want to keep the device. They can increase their per-customer value by utilizing device data to predict customer behaviors and alter their hedging (or demand response) strategies. I encourage my clients to focus on products that are proven beyond the early adopter phase, are directly tied to energy consumption (energy or HVAC management devices), or are known to save customers money. The optimization of the products comes in on the backend: companies need to be willing to have internal resources to ensure proper product integration and utilization of the valuable data.

Parks Associates' eleventh annual Smart Energy Summit will be held on February 17-19 in Austin, Texas. The event reviews the challenges and opportunity for utilities as consumer adoption of connected products increases and addresses the new approaches and solutions that are using connectivity and data to transform how energy is delivered. To learn more about the Smart Energy Summit, go here.