How Savings Justify Luxury

When most people think about home or business automation, they consider it a luxury that provides no value other than convenience. However, this notion is actually quite a fallacy. With automation devices and platforms becoming ever more prevalent, costs are diminishing quite rapidly, which lowers the savings required to justify the costs of establishing such systems. Furthermore, the savings that these systems provide are continuing to increase as systems become more efficient.

From a business’ perspective, we’ve noticed substantial savings attributable to automation. This is primarily due to the fact that any personnel’s time equates directly to money spent on wages and as an employee takes the time to manually monitor and adjust systems, you are paying them that entire time. This concept is best demonstrated in a short anecdote that came from my first economics instructor. He explained how every morning, as a teller at Bank of America, he would spend over thirty minutes turning on all of the systems required for daily operations. These systems included heating, lighting, all the computers, and more. He would even chuckle at how long it took to set up everything every single day and how he was getting paid to do it.

At the time I was in astonishment of how long it took and the fact that they could not do much to work around it except for continuing to pay him to come in early. I realize now, however, that had they installed some basic automation equipment, they could have saved thousands of dollars annually by not paying him to complete these tasks.

For homeowners, we have discovered overwhelmingly positive reactions toward the ability to control many of their home appliances and systems all remotely from their phone or computer. This ability, combined with the use of schedules, has allowed many users to save greatly in electricity costs. For example, they save on heating and lighting costs by using it only when they need it.

Overall, it is evident that homeowners and business owners alike have demonstrated quite positive emotions regarding the performance of their automation systems. The benefit we most often see that stands out is not only the convenience, but the savings associated with it.