In October, GCommerce announced that industry veteran Scott Luckett had joined the company as vice president of industry strategy. Luckett spent 17 years at the Auto Care Association, heading up industry data standards efforts and serving as the organization’s CIO. He spoke to Aftermarket Business World about his new role.
What will you be doing in your new role?
The first of those was our announcement of a joint venture with [data management provider] Edgenet of Nashville, and that's just one example of GCommerce reaching outside of the box to add additional services and products to what we can deliver to our customers in the industry.
Will your work there tie into your previous work with the Auto Care Association?
The exciting thing about this is that it is such a perfect fit. I was with the association for 17 years, and was witness to the birth and development of the industry best practices and data standards ACES and PIES. GCommerce is a leading transaction company with a great appetite for content. Edgenet has an excellent reputation for product content, and that's what drew the two companies together.
The wonderful thing from my perspective is that it's all standards based. I'm excited about the opportunity to serve the industry and the interests of ACES and PIES at an even higher level and grander scale.
What do you think the biggest challenge will be for you in your new role?
Remembering where I parked my car at the airport! There's going to be a lot of travel involved.
I think the other challenge is to make sure we effectively communicate what we see happening down the road and around the corner. An important development that we believe is coming is the increasing role of Web search and e-commerce for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer. Everyone knows that Google applies a lot of science to their search results and the order in which they are presented. The richness and completeness of automotive product information is going to become very important in where you rank in the Google search results going forward.
What do you consider your biggest accomplishment from your days with the industry association?
I think it was the privilege of bringing industry competitors together to work on shared solutions. That was probably the most satisfying. It was not a natural process and there was understandable reluctance on the part of many, but we prevailed and I think the industry is so much better off trading content and messages in a standardized fashion. Getting those dogs and cats to play nicely together was very satisfying and rewarding.
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