I was thinking a lot about the topic for this article, and I figured out it would be best to dig a bit through the history of automation and eCommerce business and discover the main reasons it is so important to combine the two in your industry.
The year 2021 is almost closing. Most of us will make a summary of what we’ve done for the past 12 months, what we accomplished, and what percentage of our plans we completed.
It will be a stunning year for some, for others less, but whatever the case is, it’s essential to learn from the mistakes we made and not repeat them in 2022.
As an eCommerce business, you probably have tons of decisions to make daily. A fast-paced and dynamic world asks that from us, with loads of diverse tools and various marketplaces, to sell our products or services, making you feel dizzy and overwhelmed, especially if we add the humans’ fear of change.
But there’s a catch. Your business won’t be able to keep up with trends and demand without change. The world has changed, and so have businesses. And guess what? Automation is a part of that process.
Perhaps the best way to start this journey is to go back in time and learn what automation is and when it was first implemented. You might get surprised…
Yes, back to the beginning!
What is Automation?
No, no, no. Automation is not about AI running your business. You’re still in charge. It only helps to synchronize complex processes and make your business more suitable for the 21st-century demand. It represents the use of technology to minimize human input.
Still, humans remain the decision-makers. We determine the decision criteria, subprocess relationships, related actions, and everything needed for the technology to work and conduct activities. So, we are the ones who embody those predeterminations in machines and make them work the way we want.
Who knows, maybe in 100 or 150 years, AI will become so powerful that it will take over our decision-making role, but for now, we are still in charge, and everything else belongs to the domain of science fiction.
Now, most of you probably think you need to be a developer to automate your business. No, you don’t need it. Luckily, you can use plenty of tools without writing one single line of code and still manage to automate your business successfully.
History of Automation – How Did It All Begin?
If you thought that the beginning of automation was related to the IT industry and computers, you are wrong. Believe it or not, the term automation showed up in the car industry back in 1946. Yes, that’s right. And you might find it surprising that automation as a process is even older.
Automation developed from one other term, mechanization, which has extended history. Though it dates back to the days of the Industrial Revolution, we can say that the first mechanization started when prehistoric man made the first tool out of stone to ease his work. Weel, windmills, and steam machines were just continuing the developing process.
Now, every single improvement, until the beginning of the 19th century, required human involvement and their physical or mental engagement in the mechanized process. And then, something extraordinary happened.
The Forefather of Automation
You have all heard about James Watt, and many of you probably think that the steam engine was his invention, but no. Steam-driven devices existed long before James Watt has even been born. The old Greeks and Romans used a device based on this principle.
And the first commercial use of these steam-powered devices was when an English inventor and engineer, Thomas Savery, created his first steam pump.
So, what’s the deal? How come we all know about James Watt? The thing is that his later improvements of the steam engine made the steam engine process completely automated.
Yeah, you can call him the forefather of automation because, at the beginning of the use of the steam engine, people had to let the steam in and out of the chambers by opening and closing the valves.
When it was improved, the only thing left for humans was to regulate the speed and power of the engine by controlling the amount of steam.
And guess what? James fixed that as well with the flying-ball, known today as governor.
The 19th-Century Digital Computer Forerunner
Surprise, surprise! Even though computers we know today didn’t appear until the mid 20th century, we’ll find some interesting topic-related things if we dig a bit deeper into the history of automation.
The automation process didn’t end up with James Watt. The following important innovation happened in the textile industry in 1804/05 in France, known as the Jacquard loom.
Now, you’re probably wondering what one loom has to do with computers, but the system used for the machine is something similar to what will be used for the first computers some 150 years later.
And the best part is that Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the Jacquard loom, a French weaver and merchant, revolutionized the process of waving patterned clothes with his patent.
Thanks to him, Lyon became the center of the waving manufacture, and France became a severe competitor to Great Britain in the textile industry.
You might think people welcomed this invention open-armed, but no. Wavers were not so happy about this innovation. They even tried to kill Jacquard and burn all his new looms.
Fortunately, the fear of change has decreased over the years and some ten years after people started to use his looms all over France.
What was so magical about this loom? The first-ever automatic loom could wave complex patterns selected by punching steel cards containing a program. And surprisingly, it was the same principle used for the first computers back in the mid-20th century, ancestors to the modern IBM.
Modern Age and Automation
Okay, now you see how the masses do not always welcome innovations; that’s why it’s no wonder people are a bit skeptical when it is required of them to change the way they run business. But let’s speed up a bit and jump to the 20th century.
Oh, yes. The 20th century was a roller coaster. The history of automation was full of inventions. Computers, software writing programs, data storage development, sensor technology, the Internet, AI, robotic, you name it. Everything was leading right to high-range automation.
But before the first digital computer was introduced to us, in the late 1940s, a Ford Motor Company’s engineer manager, Del Harder, first used the word automation, describing mostly manufacturing processes. It sticks with us and becomes a synonym for every action performed by machines or technology in general, instead of humans.
Automation is All Around Us
The primary purpose of automation is to make the job easier for humans. That’s why it was spreading in all directions and entering every single pore of our lives. It was easy.
And today, as a result of that, it became a part of our daily life. You don’t believe me? Think twice!
Transportation
Okay, let’s start starting with transportation. We all drive automatic cars, for example. But that’s not the only segment in transportation that has been automated.
Railways have also been automated. Today you can drive in a completely automated metro line, for example, with no driver, or you can drive safely on any train, overlooked by an automation system that ensures the necessary distance between them, speed, or running on schedule.
The highest level of automation has airplanes, from auto-pilot, reservation systems to navigation and landing system.
Communication
It all began with the telephone and automatic switch. In the early days, when Bell made the first telephone call, back in 1878, everything was all done manually. You would pick up a phone, kindly ask the telephonist on the other side of the line to connect you with some specific number you want. The telephonist would do it manually, and there you go, you could talk to the person you called.
Only 11 years later, Almon Strowger invents automatic switch, and just a few years later, it’s beginning to be in use. A few years later, the dial telephone, then we had the first all-relay telephone switch, and so on until 1965 when the first all-electronic telephone switch was introduced.
No, it’s not the end of the telephone story; you probably know that (who knows, maybe you’re reading this text over your phone).
Retail
It was a massive leap from wagon trading to online selling, from labor demanding selling processes to automated.
We all know that consumer products and selling channels have changed over the years. Products have been improved, innovated, and automated, from cars to video recorders, home appliances, and phones. We see at least one or two microchip processors running operations that humans would do everywhere we look.
With the technological development of products and services, purchasing has also changed. We switched from traditional to online shopping as an easier and more convenient method.
Today’s everything within trading has a touch of automation, including tracking orders, communication with the buyers, storage, and inventory.
Nothing of this would be possible without automation.
Other segments
Yes, automation touched all other aspects of our lives, including banking, stock exchange, and even health service.
We live in an age of automation, and if you want your business to thrive in the 21st century, automation is a must.
eCommerce Business and Automation
eCommerce entered our lives some 60 years ago. Though it started as a B2B solution in the 1960s and teleshopping in the 1970s, it slowly shifted to the online space as a part of Internet solutions for demand.
We could say that Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) opened the door for eCommerce. It allowed business partners to exchange transfer orders, invoices, and other business transactions using a specific data format. At first, it was just a B2B solution,
In 1979, Michael Aldrich, an entrepreneur, and inventor introduced online shopping, enabling online transaction processing between consumers and businesses and businesses between themselves.
Now, you probably don’t remember, and not many people are familiar with the transition from teleshopping to eCommerce that we know today, which happened through the first online platform – Minitel. It was a forerunner of the World Wide Web. You could make online purchases, check stocks, open your mailbox and even chat the same way as WWW later on or make train reservations.
It might surprise you that Minitel had more than 7 million users by 1997 and that in 2009 it was still active in 10 million households.
Of course, nothing lasts forever in this world, and Minitel went to history in 2012.
In the 1990s, the world changed by an invention known as the Internet. Tada! And here we are on the well-known terrain, and the eCommerce we know today.
eCommerce Transformation
We all know that after the 1990s, trading was never the same again. It slowly and shy crawled into our lives and changed our habits and purchasing preferences.
Suddenly, online marketplaces and platforms started to emerge due to the existing possibility to offer and sell products and services online. And among the firsts, there was Amazon in 1994 and eBay in 1995. It was followed by DoubleClick in 1995, IndiaMart in 1996, Netflix in 1997, Zappos, Tradera, and Alibaba in 1999.
We mustn’t forget one crucial moment in 1998, and that is the PayPal launch. It allowed eCommerce marketplaces to bloom.
The marketing tweak happened in 2000 when Google launched its AdWords allowing users to show up in a Google search on the first page.
The signal that regular and traditional trading was irreversibly changed was in 2000, when Walmart, a retail company founded in 1962, launched its website and allowed customers to shop online.
Two years later, SafeWay Inc., an American supermarket chain, launces its delivery service, offering online shopping with delivery, in 2005, Etsy was founded, and in 2006, Shopify launched its marketplace. But that was just the beginning. We had Magento (2008), BigCommerce (2009), Jet.com (2014), and the list goes on and on.
The year 2008 will be noticed for introducing social media to our lives. That is the year when Facebook was launched. And you all know that today, every successful eCommerce pays attention to social media to promote their products or services or sell. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest all contribute to online marketing.
Platforms and online storefront services continued to emerge throughout the 21st century, and today we have around 100 highly efficient marketplaces and thousands of automation tools a modern eCommerce business can use.
Transform or Give Up
Why am I telling you all this? And why I’m tormenting you with the history of automation and eCommerce? The simplest explanation is that you will not know the importance of automation if you don’t see how the world has changed.
You see, it’s a process that’s been going on for more than a century, and within a few last decades, it just speeded up, and things will not go back. Progress is not reversible; it can only move forward.
If we stick to patterns and the traditional ways of doing business, we won’t be capable of coping with the fast-paced environment and the market demand.
And the best part is that you don’t need to be an inventor, or engineer, or developer to implement automation in your business. All you need to do is to use tools and software already existing.
After more than 15 years in the eCommerce business, I know the challenges and where the gaps are, and SyncSpider responded to the necessity of eCommerce automation. We are making your business journey as pleasant, effective, and productive as it can be. If you haven’t implemented SyncSpider solutions yet, there’s your chance. Let it be your first 2022 decision!
The 21st century made it easy to scale if you are not afraid of changes.
I wish you a happy and prosperous 2022!
Norbert Strappler
The founder and CEO of MONOBUNT Digitalagentur, SyncSpider, and DragDropr
