BBCP is pleased to be an outside investor and also advisor to OneVision Resources, the leader in the emerging Smart Home Servicing segment.

Discussions on the Smart Home often center around how quickly the mass market will evolve, given the plethora of devices and companies.

Yet, there already is a large and growing Smart Home base at the high end of the housing market. Every large, expensive new home continues to be designed and outfitted with complex technology:

• media rooms,

• distributed audio,

• distributed video,

• lighting control,

• climate control, and

• sometimes, whole house automation

There are 2 million+ high end installations in this market, with another 3-400,000 installations annually. Most are using single vendor solutions from providers few people have heard of, e.g, Control4 (IPO’d, market cap $650M). Most are using one of 8,000+ independent integrators or dealers to install their system. These systems can range from $50k to $500k, with cat5 wiring throughout the house, and a rack of servers in the basement. Smart homes are here!

Of course, the problem is that sometimes these systems crash or get hung or stop working, like our complicated computer systems at work.

And there is no service plan, and service model. The main approach for service is to call the installers cell phone. Obviously, this support model grows old very quickly for both parties; installers get interrupted in the evening and have to scramble while the homeowner get poor service over time.

The future service model will emerge in a sensible way, like it has for other sectors like home security. At the time of sale, or shortly thereafter, the homeowner should buy an affordable service plan that gives him an 800 number to call 24/7. On the other end of that phone, should be an experienced technician who can resolve most problems remotely. And for an extra fee, this technician will install a device in the home to monitor how the tech is performing, and make proactive fixes before the homeowners even realizes he has an issue.

This is the future of Smart Home Service, and the leading player is OneVision Resources. They handle the service headache for the installer, by providing high quality service to the homeowner. They charge the installer per incident to handle the headache of Tier 1 support, and they offer the homeowner a preferred service membership. With almost 100 integrator partners, OneVision is growing rapidly and building the Smart Home Service industry. Over the next 2-3 years, we anticipate continued growth in partnerships and membership, as OneVision scales a well-proven business model.

For more on trends and opportunities in the small-cap space, see our recent linked article on 5 Small-Cap Observations for Large-Cap CIOs