October - 2011
News
ALLDATA
- ALLDATA announced that its ALLDATA Market is now available to
collision repair shops. “Market” is designed to provide collision
repair shops an Internet presence including:
- Fully hosted shop website with ALLDATA content
- A listing in ALLDATA’s 'Find-A-Shop' directory
- Customer pages with service histories
- Automated newsletters on the collision shop’s behalf
- Online appointment scheduling
- Market has been available to IRFs for years according to
ALLDATA.
Audatex
- Audatex North America, Inc., announced the launch of
Audatex Insight for Repair Facilities. Insight is Audatex's
next-generation reporting and analytics tool for collision repair
facilities; Insight is designed to provide Business Intelligence to
help repair managers make better decisions.
CCC
- CCC Information Systems reports that its ONE Estimating
solution is now in more than 12,000 Repair Facilities and that
Customer Satisfaction scores among CCC ONE® users is higher than
their free-standing collision estimating system. ONE combines
estimating (Pathways) , shop management and DRP performance controls
into a single solution.
Dealermine
- Automotive dealerships in Canada can now leverage
Dealermine's web-based obsolescence management service to reduce
their investment in idle parts and manage their parts inventory more
efficiently and profitably.
Lang Marketing
- Franchised dealership parts sales (U.S.) have continued to
suffer according to Lang Marketing’s newest report. (NADA reports
that after declines in 2008 and 2009, dealer parts sales rose in
2010 – at slightly under the rate of inflation.) Dealer parts sales
have fallen over the past few years due to: (1) lower dealer service
bay parts share; (2) declines in wholesale parts volume. The report
attributes the reduction, in part, to a shrinking dealer population.
OEConnection
- OEConnection LLC, announced its selection as a finalist for the
2012 Automotive News PACE Award, the worldwide industry benchmark
for innovation among automotive suppliers on the basis of its OEM
Parts Marketing Administration (PMA) technology in the Information
Technology and Services category. PMA is rules-based software that
automates automakers’ wholesale parts programs by identifying and
re-pricing eligible program parts according to OEM rules, tracking
funds by dealer and managing reimbursements. (In 2011, OEConnection
was a PACE Awards finalist for developing FordParts.com, Ford's
service parts e-commerce portal.)
PareX
- The leading parts locator provider in Europe, PareX launched its
new website and edged closer to the North American market by
appointing a distributor for South America, Latin America and the
Carribean for its Virtual Warehouse (parts locator) and extensive
family of product extensions.
Right-to-Repair
- The RTR Coalition announced that it collected far more voter
signatures than required for the pro-consumer initiative to appear
on the Massachusetts November 2012 ballot. The ballot initiative
would allow independent repairers access to automakers’ service and
parts tools (such as diagnostic devices) as well as information
(some of which is only provided to the automakers’ franchised
dealerships). The RTR Coalition claims that the proposed legislation
would save families an average of $300-$500 annually. Limited, early
polling suggests that if the vote were held now, voters would
approve the referendum. RTR is controversial – automakers and NADA
claim that nearly all vehicle service repair information is already
available through public websites and independent providers (such as
Mitchell 1 and ALLDATA); potential unintended consequences are
feared (claims that RTR would lead to expanded off-shore parts are
circulating); and issues of IP protection as well as cost recovery
are unresolved. The impact on systems providers and information
publishers is unclear.
Servigistics
- Servigistics, a leading provider of Service Lifecycle Management
(SLM) solutions, has been recognized by Deloitte as a 2011
Technology Fast 500 Company.
Snap-on
- Snap-on announced Q3 2011 Results. Diluted EPS of $1.16;
Operating earnings of $115.1 million up 37.4%; Sales of $697.2
million up 6.8%; Sales increased 6.8%, from 2010 levels. Operating
earnings increased 37.4%, from 2010 levels. Repair Systems &
Information Group [which includes Snap-on Business Systems' EPC and
other service parts solutions] reported sales of $222.6 million in
Q3 (an increase 7.3%, from 2010). Operating earnings of $43.7
million in Q3 increased $2.0 million from 2010.
STAR
- STAR (the not-for-profit IT standards organization) posted an
extract of the October Woods & Seaton briefing on the STAR website.
Seaton writes that “… two current developments are particularly
important … STAR - is making progress quietly … while … a complex
potential ‘war of attrition’ between Reynolds and Reynolds and
various other Parties …” plays out.
Seaton notes that: “Compared with 15 or even 10 years ago, the
processes for exchanging data and integrating DMS with 3rd Party
systems have advanced a long way.” The extract concludes that 30
Organizations are members of STAR and it continues to make progress
despite the loss of ADP, Chrysler, GM and Reynolds & Reynolds as
members in recent years.
Conferences & Exhibitions
NACE
- NACE Conference and Exhibition held in Orlando Florida from
October 5-8. Exhibitors included four automakers (General Motors,
Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen), all three collision estimating
systems providers (Audatex, CCC IS, Mitchell International) as well
as four systems and digital publications suppliers important to
service parts trade and logistics (ALLDATA, APU Solution, Infomedia
with its Auto PartsBridge application and collision shop BMS -
Business Management System - provider Rome Technologies).
Digital Dealer
- Digital Dealer Conference – The Digital Dealers’ 11th conference
and exhibition was held in Las Vegas in early October.
Exhibitors of
interest to the automotive OE Service parts community:three DMS providers (ADP, DealerTrack
and Reynolds and Reynolds) as well as one service parts systems
e-commerce provider (eBay Motors). DealerTrack and eBay Motors were conference sponsors as well
as exhibitors and eBay Motors also provided a guest speaker
Blogs
SCM Focus
- [Category = Service Parts Planning] – In a timely
consideration of measuring service parts stocking effectiveness
(timely for automotive OE service parts because of supply chain
disruptions resulting from April’s earthquake and tsunami in
northern Japan and October’s flooding in Thailand), the history and
application implications of back-order compared to fill-rate metrics
is reviewed. The posting notes that civilian service parts
operations currently focus on fill-rate. It goes on to identify the
relative weakness of fill-rate: “Fill rates measure the satisfaction
only at the point of initial delay, and do not measure how late a
fulfillment actually occurs.”
[Editorial comment: In the automotive service parts business, parts
availability considerations also include: (i) whether lack of the
part makes the vehicle unsafe or unable to be driven; (ii) the
probability, if the vehicle leaves the dealership without the part
installed, that the vehicle will ever return to have that part
installed; (iii) and if the vehicle leaves the dealership and is
repaired at an IRF, the probability that the OE part is used. When a
dealership service manager says: “Your vehicle is not drivable. We
don’t have the part here at the dealership and the ‘factory’ doesn’t
have the part – it’s on national backorder with no firm date for
delivery”, the consumer’s trust in the automaker’s brand falls. The
dealership service manager may then offer an AM part. This occurred
a few years ago with one of your editor’s personal vehicles – I went
with the AM remanufactured part installed at the dealership. What
metrics were transmitted by the dealership to the automaker and how
(if at all) did this ‘event’ appear in the automaker’s KPIs? The
question is not whether fill-rate or back-order is the best metric –
both should be tracked KPIs. National emergency back-orders hurt CSI
and thus future vehicle sales.]
[Editorial comment: A July posting on “Service Matters” – the MCA
Solutions blog, provides summaries and links to studies and white
papers addressing benchmarking of service parts performance
metrics.]
Carlisle & Company – Spare Thoughts
- In a continuation of a
year of posts on “digital service customers” – Spare Thoughts – in
“Amazon Prime – Are There Lessons for Service-Parts?” offers its
views of lessons from Amazon and its Prime program. After reviewing
Prime, the post considers automaker-to-dealer parts programs such as
RIM and then identifies areas improvements in existing OEM RIM
implementations.
The post continues by identifying lessons for better serving IRFs
with OEM parts – answering “What might an Amazon Prime program look
like for them?” Looking through the eyes of the IRF customer, a list
of disincentives to ordering OEM parts is presented. (At present,
IRFs will not find ordering OE service parts from dealers to be
nearly “as easy as buying from Amazon via Prime”).
The post translates Amazon’s Prime into an OE service parts program
(“online multi-brand, detailed catalog of genuine parts” and “order
online … routed to the closest participating wholesaling dealer and
confirmed, with a stated same-day ETA” and “the repairer gets a
discount if the parts are late”). Then the post ends with
observation that some OEMs have launched commercial parts sites that
have some of the features of the target solution. Other OEMs are
said to be considering “patching into aftermarket ordering systems.”
(No names were named for the aftermarket ordering systems.)
Conclusion of post closes with observation that RepairLink with MORE
(a joint effort of OEConnection and Snap-on) is conceptually close
to the Amazon Prime’s model.
[Editorial comment: a missing element from the Carlisle & Company’s
target and all current implementations is a discount if parts are
late.]
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