Convinced by educational content

Beyond getting everyone to interact on Microsoft Teams and other video-streaming services, another helpful habit that outlasted COVID-19 is increasingly using videos, podcasts and other online content for research, education and training—and resolving supply-chain issues. One of the best-known examples are the books AutomationDirect used to publish as hardcovers, featuring instructive articles and product listings, which are still available as e-books.        

 

“For the most part, we’re back to business as usual and on a good growth trend. The majority of our suppliers came out the other side, and are no longer having trouble meeting the demands we’re seeing,” says Jeff Payne, business development team captain at AutomationDirect. “However, demand has also slowed. We’re still trying to filter the data about who was out of stock or had tons of it, but it’s hard to say it was organic. I’m sure many different influences played a role in what we saw, but one contributing factor was the overabundance of inventory padding we saw in 2021-22. Initially, when the supply chain began slowing and the component shortage hit consumers, we saw people begin to pad their personal inventories. You can’t blame them. They had orders to fill, and parts were in short supply.”

 

To overcome these challenges, Payne reports that many suppliers are finding out what Automation has known and practiced for a long time—suppliers and distributors must have superior documentation, and all product-related data must be presented to users in easy-to-locate and understand formats. “We always emphasize clear and concise documentation. In many cases, we completely rewrite source material from suppliers to give customers a better product,” explains Payne. “We want to make sure we can give customers all the information about a product or technology they could get elsewhere. This includes reinforcing product diversity within categories, and providing multiple suppliers of limit switches, power suppliers, photo switches, for example, and ultra-low-cost and ultra-high-end products in different regions.”

 

 

In recent years, of course, Payne confirms that videos took over as the best sources of how-to information. In fact, visitors accessing AutomationDirect’s video libraries spiked during the pandemic, and it had about 13 million views across all topics during the past 12 months.  

 

“People have grown accustomed to finding do-it-yourself videos for almost every task, and this translate nicely for our industries,” adds Payne. “Our business model is hyper-focused on small to mid-sized customers. We target customers that many large supplier’s sales channels and distributors want to avoid. Our content creation is targeted at users, who may not have the experience or training that a large corporate engineering team has. We create hundreds of user manuals and videos every year that are tailored to customers, who may need help getting started or are seeking details about PID loop fundamentals. Our documentation and videos walk visitors through learning, understanding, set up, and the variables that impact a process.

 

 

More recently, AutomationDirect launched its Panel Builder program that went live on its website in March 2023. Its lists independent, third-party shops that provide panel building, contract manufacturing, kitting, assembly, certification and other services, which can help clients with their reshoring and source diversification efforts for different product categories. It joins AutomationDirect’s 10-year-old System Integrator (SI) Direct program.

 

 

“It’s big data’s world and we live in it. There’s a wealth of knowledge in every process, and the individuals who will come out on top are those who learn from this data. In every aspect of a process, data can make you more efficient and save money. It provides vivid looks into processes, so you can adjust to produce higher-quality products even faster, or tune in to the health of machines and components.”