If you take a look at our message on our homepage, it reads:
“CCE Technologies creates software that empowers engineering organizations and software developers to simplify complexity, unlock engineering design data, automate workflows, and accelerate innovation.”
Sounds like we have it all figured out, right?
Wrong.
We don’t. And, frankly, nobody does.
Anyone who’s ever built something new knows that building is hard – incredibly hard.
It rarely starts with certainty. More often, it starts with a question, a half-baked idea or an insight pulled from a casual conversation – personal or professional. It means creating amateurish proofs of concept that are functional but have terrible UI/UX, because sometimes you need to prove something can work before worrying about how good it looks. It’s having the humility to look at your “baby” through someone else’s eyes and admit it might not be as beautiful as you think. It comes down to figuring out how to get the word out, often with a limited budget, because a great idea needs people willing to listen.
And perhaps more importantly, it means figuring out where things are headed next. As Wayne Gretzky famously put it, “skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” That’s easier said than done in a technological landscape that shifts by the day – and has only become more complex with the introduction of AI.
How We Build Is How We Automate
There’s an interesting parallel between how we build and what we build.
We build automation software. At its core, automation requires understanding how something gets done today, figuring out where it could be better, and creating a more reliable and repeatable way to do it. You observe. Question. Build. Test. Refine. And inevitably, you find something else to improve.
We try to approach building products the same way. Do we get it right all the time? Absolutely not. But we aim to listen, learn, and make changes one step at a time. That’s our guiding philosophy. Unless you’re willing to listen, you probably shouldn’t be in the business of building. That takes curiosity, experimentation, and a healthy dose of humility. It means challenging conventional thinking, being willing to fail – and continuing to build anyway.
That’s where the name Automation In Action comes from. You can theorize, strategize and debate the best way to do something all day long. Eventually, you have to put it into action. Build it. Test it. See what happens. Learn something. Change something. Try again.
That’s true of automation, and it’s true of us. We won’t always have the answers, but we’ll share what we’re learning while we’re in the middle of figuring it out.
There’s a little “stay hungry, stay foolish” in that philosophy, too. Steve Jobs’ oft-quoted advice speaks to something we strongly believe: progress requires being willing to ask a question, even at the risk of sounding foolish, and having the courage to build something that may not work the first time.
Showing the Blooper Reel
Automation In Action isn’t meant to be the Instagram version of building – all glam shots from picturesque vacations and perfectly posed family photos. We’re more interested in the blooper reel.
What did it actually take to get that perfect-looking shot? What worked? What didn’t? What did we learn? That’s what we want Automation In Action to be: a place to share what worked, what didn’t, test some of our theories and talk honestly about what we’re learning along the way. We’d rather show you some of the mess behind the finished product than pretend we had it figured out from the beginning.
In the spirit of showing you the blooper reel, here’s our first one. When we decided we needed a name for this blog, we did what all good marketers apparently do today – we went to the ChatGPT well. Luckily for us, the responses ranged from pedestrian to absolutely terrible.
And we’re glad they were. It forced us to think harder. It forced us to persevere. It forced us to come up with plenty of our own terrible options that didn’t pass our internal team’s barrier to entry – and we are a picky bunch! – before finally landing on Automation In Action.
Is this the greatest name ever?
Debatable.
But we’re pretty proud of it anyway.
So, to everyone who cared enough to get this far into Blog Zero – thank you. 
Subscribe to Automation In Action and come along for the ride.
We’ll have plenty of interesting, unvarnished thoughts to share about real-world challenges we see around engineering design data, workflows and automation. We’ll talk about what we’re learning, what we’re building, ideas we’re testing and where we think things are headed next. And yes, some of it will inevitably be about how our latest and greatest product, Impact360, will solve world hunger and bring about global peace.
We’ll leave the comments open, too. Don’t hesitate to tell us if we’re off base. Worst case, vent about your automation problems.
Maybe we can help.
For everything else, talk to your therapist. Or your dog.
