Parts eCommerce for Dealerships: Charts

Preface

On October 15, I posted – as an article on LinkedIn – a comprehensive summary of dealership parts eCommerce solutions.  This post extends that article, most significantly by publishing three charts that both place the content of the article into a structured, at-a-glance form and provide further depth.  Immediately below I briefly cover the highlights of the original article to provide context for the three charts in this post.  If you have not read the original article, access it here.

These charts and the original article matter because (in the last decade) sales of new OEM replacement parts have shifted dramatically away from phone and fax orders and to eCommerce.  Furthermore, the industry is on an inexorable path towards eCommerce for the vast majority of OEM spare parts sales – driven by a number of factors that are revealed (in part) through these three charts.  This slow-motion revolution may upend the current equilibrium – changing market share of parts by part-types (new OEM, AM, salvage parts) and certainly changing the winners and losers among dealer systems providers as well as between dealers competing for parts sales.  As the charts show, parts eCommerce solutions are intertwined with other parts and service solutions, suggesting risks and opportunities for providers of EPCs, wholesale CRM and other parts and service solutions used by dealerships.  The charts, articles and posts also are a guidepost for OEMs.

This post is one of a series of blog posts (written or being planned) describing the full range of service-parts applications used by dealerships and/or OEMs (vehicle manufacturers).  The focus is on automotive dealer systems in North America but applies more broadly.