There is an old saying that ‘time is money’. While most people may think of this as “well, the more time I spend at work, the more money I make”, a business owner may see this time as more of a liability than an asset. If this employee’s time is spent doing non-work-related tasks, that would make their time a liability to you as the business owner because it is not directly making the business any money, but instead, costing the business money in wages. The solution here is simple; keep that employee doing tasks that make the business money. You might be asking yourself “what does this have to do with automating a business?”. Well, let’s go over a few typical things that happen when a business opens its doors every day and see where automation can help. A typical business will have someone that ‘opens shop’. At 8:00 every weekday they will unlock the front door, and provided they don’t have two arms full of stuff when they arrive, will run directly to the security system keypad to disarm the system. Once the system has been disarmed, invariably some lights will need to be turned on. Depending on the size of business we’re talking about, this step alone may take 10-20 min. Unless you live here in Denver where the temperature is always perfect (kidding), there may be some playing with the thermostat that needs to be done. Once this is all set and ready for the day, some music may need to be turned on as well. If you own a restaurant or medical office, you will most likely have a TV or 18 to turn on and possibly switch channels on (more on the benefits here later). Well, now everything is on and ready for the day, but it’s 8:30 already. Maybe two customers have showed up already and left because someone was on a ladder trying to turn the music on in the back room and couldn’t help them. Unless you were lucky enough to hire Merlin the Wizard, how can one person do all these tasks without wasting any of the businesses valuable time? Easily! Let’s take the last example and fix it so that you as the business owner are not spending money on the tedious daily tasks of opening and closing shop. For the sake of this example, we will pretend that we are talking about a small retail store. The manager unlocks the door in the morning and the alarm starts beeping, needing a valid code to disarm it. As soon as a valid code is entered, all the lights automatically turn on to a level that compliments the atmosphere of the store, the thermostat is adjusted automatically to a temperature that is comfortable for that time of year, the music turns on to a station that is acceptable for all your customers, and the two TVs above the fitting rooms automatically turn on to display channels approved by the business owner. Pretty cool, huh? You just consolidated 30 or more minutes of unprofitable labor costs it into a task that takes less than 30 seconds! We could also take it one step further and have the business send you a text message if the system is disarmed after normal opening hours indicating a late employee. Thinking even further, why not give each employee a key-card instead of a key that would automatically unlock the door and disarm the security system (assuming it is within normal business hours). Now the two arms full of stuff that the employee is carrying doesn’t even need to be put down before they are at their desk ready to work. Same thing applies for closing time. Arm the system and everything automatically turns off saving energy and even more money! How much do you pay your opener and closer? How much would it save your business every day to turn that first and last 30 minutes of the day into productive labor instead of a heavy liability? Restaurant owners may have it especially tough. The light levels need to be changed throughout the day, patio heaters or misters may need to turn on or off depending on the temperature outside, the music selection may need to change at dinner time, and customers always seem to be watching the wrong channel requiring someone to change it for them. One of the biggest issues that I have seen in restaurants with a few TVs to control is that someone has to go around and point the remote at each TV to turn it on or off. Well, if the TVs are fairly far apart, this might not be a problem, but in a bar with multiple TVs next to each other, this may prove difficult as they are typically the same brand of TV. This causes the TV your pointing the remote at to turn on… along with one of the TVs next to it, but not the other TV. Shoot, well, just point the remote at the TV that didn’t turn on and hit power…. oh, crap. Now that one in the middle just turned off… hit power again and now the one in the middle is off and the two next to it are on… better just get the ladder and turn that one on manually… I see this problem constantly, and can easily fix it with a control system that isolates all the TVs from each other making it very easy to manipulate via a single remote control or a smart-phone/tablet app. This same control system would make it easy for the restaurant to automatically change lighting levels throughout the day, turn on or off patio misters and heaters, change music channels at dinner time, turn every other TV to the football game on Monday nights… anything your imagination can cook up that might keep your bartender behind the bar instead of playing with volume controls and 15 different DirecTV remotes all night. Just one remote or tablet can fix this entire headache! In any case, making life easier on you and your employees is as simple as calling D-Lux Home Systems for a free consultation to see what kinds of options are available for saving your business some money. Control systems are getting more affordable and more powerful all the time, so now is the time to take those wasted dollars and do something fun with them!
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 00:47:34 +0000
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