May 23, 2018, Fort Worth, TX. – PartsTech today released an infographic highlighting the winners of the “ACES & PIES Content Excellence Award” and providing a behind the scenes look at the data analysis used in the selection process.  The 2018 ACES & PIES Content Excellence award was presented at the Automotive Content Professionals Network (ACPN) Knowledge Exchange Conference in Fort Worth, TX. The award recognizes suppliers that regularly create rich, accurate product content. Award recipients are “data unicorns” –  sources of excellent catalog data and benchmarks in the industry. PartsTech Director of Data Management, Eric Lough, presented the awards to the following winners at the ACPN conference.

Background:

ACES and PIES is the automotive industry standard for communicating product data between part manufacturers and e-commerce platforms. PartsTech conducted an objective measure of the quality and completeness of aftermarket product content from 21 top brands, summarized in the attached infographic.

2018 ACES & PIES Content Excellence Award Winners:

• Small Catalog (fewer than than 10,000 applications) – VDO
• Medium Catalog (10,000 – 99,999 applications) – MOOG
• Large Catalog (100,000 or more applications) – Bilstein

The auto care industry is worth $200 billion, and yet many auto repair shops drain resources researching parts via telephone and printed catalogs, which contributes to mistakes and confusion. The aftermarket has lagged; consumers now expect easy interaction with standardized online catalogs that include detailed product descriptions and photos, to facilitate online purchases. VDO, MOOG and Bilstein have won the ACES & PIES Content Excellence Award because they’ve invested in modernizing and standardizing their parts catalogues, and have raised the bar within the industry. Buying their parts online is as simple and uncomplicated as shopping for consumer goods. The result is an effortless end-user experience, which saves repair shops time and money.

The Automotive Content Professionals Network (ACPN) created the ‘Content Excellence Award’ because of the importance of standardized product data to the long-term success of the aftermarket – rich, accurate parts-catalog content helps end users to easily differentiate between parts, and make correct buying decisions. ACPN approached PartsTech to develop detailed criteria (available here) and to judge the submissions because of PartsTech’s experience integrating multiple manufacturers’ catalogs on its site, and without bias. ACPN needed a partner with the technological horsepower and flexibility to develop an analytics package that could comb through 3.8 million vehicle application records, and deliver on a short time frame.

“As an e-commerce company, we were ‘geeking out’ about this award, and figured we we’d have been alone in that regard,” said Eric Lough, Director of Data Management, PartsTech, Inc. “Instead, we were truly stunned by the outpouring of support. People were stopping us in the hallways of the ACPN conference, with thanks for acknowledging the need to modernize the parts-shopping experience. The ACES & PIES Content Excellence Award celebrates those who’ve challenged themselves to modernize, and it establishes a roadmap for how others can do the same.”    

The 2018 ACES & PIES Content Excellence award marks the automotive aftermarket industry’s first objective analysis of parts catalog data, and is designed to illustrate how parts suppliers stack up when it comes to ACES & PIES standards (Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard & Product Information Exchange Standard) compliance.