Unleashing the Power of Intelligent Automation

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As a director at Mouser Electronics with responsibilities that include automation, I am at the forefront of this 60-year-old business's latest wave of evolution. Currently, our attention is focused on combining the power of robotic process automation (RPA)— using software robots to automate tasks traditionally performed by humans—with the scalability and efficiency of no-code and low-code artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which let users use drag-and-drop functionality and visual interfaces to design and build applications instead of using traditional coding languages. 

What started two years ago with a presentation on RPA to my boss has, in a very short time, become a significant source of efficiency, productivity, and value for our company and our customers.

Benefits of Intelligent Automation at Mouser

Intelligent automation excels at accelerating repetitive, mundane tasks and processes. For example, when one of our large customers issues a request for quotation (RFQ) to our customer service team, we have programmed bots to spot the RFQ, go through our system, and respond to the customer's request automatically in mere minutes. By accelerating the speed at which we can provide a quote, Mouser is more likely to obtain a customer's business and to help more customers faster.

The benefits of these capabilities cannot be overstated. Where traditional development methods may take weeks or months to release a program that ultimately may not solve the problems at hand, no-code and low-code tools let us create a bot in one day and test it immediately. We can start fast and fail fast, and the development cost is low. 

Other wins include more timely processing; reduced errors; and better, faster customer service, all of which lead to happier customers and more business for Mouser. 

Three Best Practices for Intelligent Automation 

Of course, as with any technology implementation, knowing best practices for RPA, no-code tools, and low-code tools can help you attain significant returns faster. Based on my RPA experience before and at Mouser, I recommend these three best practices.

Recruit Champions
At any company, changing former ways of thinking and tackling challenges is always hard, and intelligent automation cannot be accomplished unilaterally by one individual or team. To succeed in this endeavor, you need to ally yourself with champions, who are critical to helping you do the following: 
 •    Sufficiently understand the problems that need to be solved or the tasks that need to be completed.
 •    Access the platforms that will enable that intelligence.
 •    Get individual and team buy-in on your offering.

When you recruit these kinds of champions to your cause, you do not need to convince them to care about intelligent automation. They come to you with opportunities to help their teams or others, especially once you provide an initial demonstration. Once they see the possibilities in that first RPA, it becomes real; they start imagining what else the technology can do, and they freely evangelize it with others. 

So, how do you recruit these types of champions to your cause? I tirelessly tell leaders what RPA and no-code and low-code tools can do, show them how other businesses are using intelligent automation, educate them about our in-house capabilities, and share solutions that could fit their challenges well. I also use these interactions to build a rapport with them and better understand their business. 

Ensure the Right Fit
The goal is to let automation relieve humans of low-value tasks and put humans—with their complex decision-making abilities—to work on the tasks that only they can do and that provide the greatest value for the business. Repetitive, mundane tasks—even tasks that require a lot of number crunching but are still binary by nature—are usually a good fit for intelligent automation. 
If you reach a point where you are just automating for automation's sake or seeing diminishing returns in your efforts, that could be a sign that you need to rebalance automation versus human workloads.

Stay Agile 
These local instances of AI automation are different from traditional development methods, as they allow us to fail faster and quickly get results. We don't need to solve the entire problem; instead, we need to focus first on what an initial minimum viable product looks like and then iterate repeatedly, building more value each time. When we take advantage of this inherently agile nature of intelligent automation, we can deliver value faster and minimize our risk.

Pitfalls of Intelligent Automation

As previously mentioned, while RPA and no-code and low-code AI tools are powerful, they are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes, business leaders mistakenly assume that intelligent automation can take on any business task. In these cases, technical leaders have the opportunity to educate and be transparent as they steer these conversations back to reality.

Another pitfall is the tendency to rush into creating solutions without first assessing and understanding the nuances of a given situation. Without that knowledge, cycles extend, teams struggle to determine the right balance of automation versus human involvement, and the value of the project is diminished. 

For that reason, despite how quickly teams can deploy intelligent automation, we must take the time to perform our due diligence and understand the details—especially regarding security and compliance, governance, and coding standards—while keeping everyone abreast of what the automation is doing and how it will affect each team.

Unlimited Potential of Intelligent Automation

Even with the RPA and no-code/low-code tool successes we have experienced at Mouser over the past two years, we have only scratched the surface of this technology's capabilities. However, leading these conversations, nurturing relationships with critical champions, respecting the balance between automation and humans, and taking our time to do things right will continue to be a roadmap to success. 

I can't wait to see what we unlock next to improve Mouser and provide more value to our customers.