Five years after its launch, the Enki home automation solution is honing its position to better respond to the challenges of energy sobriety and enhance its affordability. Decoding a constantly improving solution for the positive home.
With the development of new technologies, ‘smart home’ solutions have been booming over the last few years. This is evident in France, where one in five households is equipped with at least one connected object. Gradually, connectivity is becoming a part of our daily lives and connectivity functions are now native to a growing number of products. With this in mind, Leroy Merlin positioned itself on this promising market sector five years ago with the launch of its automated solution, Enki.
Enki, a ‘smart’ solution for automating the home, accessible to all
Driven by ADEO’s ambition of being the leader of the positive home, Leroy Merlin has, from the start, focused on developing an automated solution accessible to all and easy to use.
Enki makes it possible for inhabitants, using a free application, to command all the connected objects in the home, in four main areas of usage: heating (radiators, openings, air-conditioning), security (alarms, motion detectors, cameras), motorisation (openings, blinds, shutters) and lighting (light bulbs and lights). In terms of products, there are more than 500 products from 25 brands that are compatible with the application, including ADEO own brands at affordable prices.
Increasingly, customers are looking for an overall automated solution to control all the connected objects in the home: motorisation, lighting, security and heating. This is possible with the Enki Box, which enables access to an even wider range of compatible connected objects.
“Everything works together”, says Laurent Glaser, Director of strategy and foresight for the connected home at Leroy Merlin. “The camera is activated with the openings, the lighting comes on when you arrive, the heating goes off when you leave, the presence detection system is activated during your holidays!”.
Behind the application, the key component is an interoperability platform for objects in the Cloud, designed and developed in France by a dedicated Leroy Merlin team of 100 people. Already available in France, Enki will now be marketed in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland.
A new position
Enki has recently taken a step forward with a new positioning: offering a sustainable home solution that benefits everyone.
This positioning has resulted in two major changes: price accessibility for all, through the integration of wifi technologies and the availability of a box for less than 30 euros; strengthening of the energy-saving element, while making progress in all the major areas of the home.
“With the rise in energy prices, many customers approach us with questions on how to reduce their energy bill” says Laurent Glaser. “Energy renovation involves considerable financial commitment and automation represents an initial means to act easily and at lesser cost on energy consumption! Enki can make a product ‘smart’ when it was not natively so, and at an affordable price!”.
Improving the home, at the heart of ADEO’s concerns
With Enki, Leroy Merlin and ADEO enable inhabitants to live better in their homes, with greater comfort in terms of heat and a safe and healthy home environment.
This automated solution is another illustration of ADEO’s desire to improve the home, by making it useful to the world and positive, i.e., “energy-saving, water-saving, healthier, from sustainable resources and manufactured in respect of women and men and the environment”..
And Enki will continue to evolve to adjust to the new uses of inhabitants. “We are on a permanent quest to improve the quality of experience and we reflect upon new usages in all areas where ADEO develops its own brands, provided that, of course, they make sense!” concludes Laurent Glaser.
And so, in short Enki provides
– a single free application
to control more than 500 connected objects from more than 25 ADEO own brands (MDH)
– an easy to use solution
that’s accessible to the greatest number of people to command all the connected objects in the home on four usages
–command of connected objects
remotely, using a smartphone, by voice (Google Home or Alexa) or via a remote control device
– the opportunity to connect
objects that were not natively ‘smart’ to begin with