Managing the Digital Home

While the enterprise has traditionally driven innovation in networking and computing, we have seen a dramatic shift to the digital home driving the industry. The digital home is an interconnected and interoperable network of PCs and consumer electronics devices, ideally enabling an integrated environment for communicating and consuming content. It's a big market opportunity. One report estimated 2007 revenues for the digital home device markets to be $268 billion.

Despite the promise of an integrated environment, we are seeing troubling trends that could seriously impede economic growth. Consumers are having trouble dealing with the technical complexity of the digital home. Connectivity problems are rampant; return rates for unused equipment are high. In fact, a recent Accenture study put the cost of U.S. consumer electronics product returns at close to $14 billion.

If consumer electronics companies and service providers are to leverage digital home trends as a means of pursuing profitable growth, they need to rethink their business models, organizations, processes and systems for helping the consumer sort through the technical complexities of the digital home.

Our top five considerations:

• Make it easier to extend and integrate devices and services across platforms—and with one another—through standard interfaces and protocols.
  
  
• Design effective packages of premium, managed digital home services, consisting of installation, management and support of devices.
  
  
• Provide an easy-to-use "softpanel" for configuring, interacting with and managing devices and services in a consistent way, such as a device/services dashboard.
  
  
• Provide more effective, end-to-end service management for devices and services.
  
  
• Work to create and maintain trust in your diagnostic and repair capabilities.
  
  

Easy-to-use and interoperable products and effective service and in-home care are not just costs; they can be a means of differentiating your business and sustaining high performance.