Randy Wiser is president of Quantum Data Services (QDS), a provider of electronic data mapping and cataloging services. Prior to forming QDS in 1998, Wiser served as the vice president of sales at Profit Pro Inc. (a point-of-sale systems provider for the automotive aftermarket). He also served on the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) Technology Standards and Solutions Committee during its first five years.
What's the No. 1 technology setback you encounter in the aftermarket?
In my prior job working on electronic cataloging with manufacturers, everyone thought it was a great idea but nobody was prepared to map their own data. The folks that kind of jumped on board initially got it figured out, but there is a whole accessory end of the industry that is still doing things on paper. They either feel that moving to electronic communication is too hard, or they don't have the time or resources to implement it.
What would you say your customers struggle with the most in making the conversion from paper to electronic formats, and in maintaining the integrity of their data?
For most of these guys, the mentality for years has been around paper catalogs. They focused on engineering the parts, getting the parts out on the street and building a paper catalog to sell them. Electronic cataloging was always an afterthought. A lot of times what reads well in paper form doesn't always lend itself to the electronic format.
Just getting past some of the paper catalog issues is sometimes difficult, because the company will call out this widget or this vehicle and say it's diesel. The other record, then, you assume is gas or one is ABS and you assume the other record is without ABS. There is a lot of missing information, and you wind up with a lot of duplicate records. That's a byproduct of paper cataloging.
Do your customers understand the distinct difference between product attribute data (PIES) and application catalog data (ACES, e-catalogs)?
I would say 85 percent of the people I deal with are pretty well indoctrinated as far as what's available, especially with ACES. Most everyone jumped on the legacy bandwagon, and it's taking time, but ACES is being accepted more and more all the time. I think there are a fair number of those that support ACES and legacy formats, but haven't jumped on PIES. I think that standard is lagging behind with some of these companies.
In your market, what are some of the most interesting trends you've seen either in terms of customer adoption and deployment, or in new technology developments that impact e-catalog and data mapping systems?
Some of the manufacturers, mostly the larger ones, have actually implemented building the ACES format into their internal system. It's good for them. It takes away some business for me, but that's okay, because instead of keeping track of all of these different formats, and exporting everything in different formats to build paper catalogs or populate other systems, their internal systems are taking care of everything, and I think that's pretty exciting. Instead of five different systems performing five different functions and not talking to each other, you have one system handling everything.
You still see people building all sorts of ad hoc tools, but I would want to have one system that accesses multiple databases and updates all of them.
