Federal-Mogul Motorparts took home the National Catalog Managers Association (NCMA) gold-level President's Award for Catalog Excellence for its Garage Gurus (formerly SmartChoice) mobile app in May. The app, which is part of the company's Tech First initiative, allows iPhone and Android users to find parts information and technical support on their phones.
Last year's mobile app gold winner, K&N Engineering, took home the award this year for its online catalog.
Federal-Mogul launched the mobile solution as SmartChoice in 2013. The app also includes VIN scanning and license plate-to-VIN technology that allows customers to find parts using the license number.
The mobile app now has 20,000 users in the U.S. and Canada. Federal-Mogul developed the app in-house, but has an outside developer that assists with coding changes and upgrades.
"We do all of the layout, graphics, and all of the things that we have to do to keep up with the changes that Apple and Android push out to us," says Brent Berman, director of training and consumer experience. "Then we have those developers that help us push the changes through. Our turnaround time has been pretty good. Our iOS 8 update was out within 60 days."
Garage Gurus
Federal-Mogul combined a number of its technology and training initiatives under the Garage Gurus program as part of a reorganization of its technician-facing initiatives. The platform includes a new network of state-of-the-art regional training centers, Gurus-on-the-Go product technology vans, and an e-learning curriculum available at www.FMgaragegurus.com.
"In the last two decades the model was really to push a lot of communication and information through the channel, and hope it got to the target audience of technicians," Berman says. "But if you look at our resellers, they might have 800 or 1,200 vendors all shooting information at them and hoping it got out to the trade."
The Tech First and Garage Gurus programs specifically target that information and training directly to technicians. "We had all of these fragmented programs, but no consistent message or ecosystem," Berman says. "With Tech First, we're cutting through the channel and getting the message to the technicians."
As part of the program, Federal-Mogul has expanded its regional training vans from eight to 30 vehicles across the country, with plans to have 50 vans on the road by 2016. The company also plans to have 15 regional training centers online by the end of this year.
"We've also scaled up the amount of ASE master trainers," Berman says. "With the van drivers, our sales force, and the trainers at our facilities, we have more than 100 ASE certified team members now."
The new training centers expand on the experience that the company was only previously able to provide at its St. Louis location. "We're putting that hands-on experience in the technician's back yard," Berman says. "We've also implemented a software system, a learning management system, that helps us keep track of everything happening on our back end."
The mobile app has also been updated to include license-plate lookup. "That blows people away," Berman says. "VIN numbers are not always in the most convenient place to scan or view, so you can type in the license number and pull up the vehicle."
The app also includes a chat function, as well as the ability to receive e-mail responses from the Garage Gurus team or to call the company's Tech Line. "The last thing we've put in place is a way for users to check our Garage Gurus rewards program," Berman says. "We're rolling that out this summer. They can get rewards points for training, attending courses and other activities."
The company is considering adding support for Windows Mobile, as well. "There are actually people using Windows Mobile now, but they are really still caught between that and Windows 10, which isn't out yet," Berman says. "We're looking at possibly supporting Windows with our next expansion of the app."
The company is also retooling all of its websites to support mobile platforms. "We want to be mobile optimized or have responsive design across our entire portfolio," Berman says. "Our B2B customers are using mobile devices, along with our field sales force, our resellers, and our internal users. We need to make those leaps so we can have uniform mobile platforms for all of our users."
In addition to the award for the mobile app, Federal-Mogul also won an Electronic Data Excellence award from NAPA for its FP Diesel catalog offering. The company was able to create an electronic catalog product for non-standard heavy duty engine and sealing products. "We worked with NAPA to deliver data in a way they could display on their PartsPRO catalog screens, as well as ordering directly from the manufacturers," Berman says.
NAPA can now display 35,000 different industrial and agricultural engine combinations. "It was a labor or love in a way," Berman says. "It took a massive amount of data and presents it in a way that the heavy-duty installers look things up. That opens the door for other product lines like marine that don't fit into templated approaches we have for other product data."
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