Nate Williams, Chief Revenue Officer at August, responds to the following industry questions for the 2016 CONNECTIONS Summit conference, hosted annually by Parks Associates at CES:

What is the most important next step to engage consumers in smart home solutions, connected entertainment services, and/or value-added services like tech support and connected health?

Engaging customers requires products and services that allow them to overcome real issues and frustrations that impede them from getting things done -- whether that is managing safe and secure access for your house cleaner, keeping an eye on the kids through home monitoring or the growing need to help seniors to stay in their home longer through connections with loved ones. Smart home solutions can help address all of these immediate needs and provide real value.

What is the biggest challenge your company faces in 2016?

As with all companies in the smart home space, we are creating products and services that customers may not realize they could benefit from today. Our job is to help them understand how these products and services can fit into their daily life. We are also anticipating the opportunities and challenges that will arise from the evolving smart home -- for example, how new devices and services will integrate and the overall impact on the consumer experience.

What is the biggest driver for the connected consumer market?

What's driving this market is a convergence of three things -- the proliferation of smartphones, connected devices and consumers getting comfortable with a new way to interact with and control their home. It is no longer just about fun gadgets, the connected home is now delivering real value to consumers that make their life more simple and secure.

What are the most important initiatives your company is taking in 2016?

In October we announced August Access, a series of carefully selected partnerships that will change the way you interact with your home, removing the barriers that exist with home delivery and home repair. We are currently in pilot with several of our partners and will continue to expand these pilots and roll out programs in key markets.

The advantage of connected home devices is the ability to continually evolve the product for existing customers. We will continue to listen to our customers and innovate our core products: the August Smart Lock, August Doorbell Cam and August Smart Keypad.

Partnership are also an important area where we will focus to deliver a better overall experience for the smart home customer as we have already with Nest, Comcast, Amazon, Logitech and others.

Describe your vision for the smart home and entertainment markets in 2020.

The home has been traditionally perceived as a box with utilities; heat, light and power. Now we are re-thinking the home just as we did with the automobile in the industrial revolution. Within five years, smart home will become more mainstream and consumers will get comfortable with living in a dynamic and interactive environment. There are many different types of people coming and going into a home and now the home will be able to address their different needs. If done well, we will deliver on our promise of the smart home to be more intelligent and aware - in other words, more personalized.

Nate Williams will be speaking on the panel session "Monetization Strategies for IoT and the Connected Home" on January 6 at 9:15am. Other confirmed speakers include Belkin, EnergyHub, PlumChoice, WeatherBug Home, and Zonoff. If you're attending CES, make sure to add it to your schedule!

For more information on this executive conference, visit www.connectionssummit.com.