What's the No. 1 technology setback you encounter in the aftermarket?
Clearly identifying the return on investment. Management hasn't clearly quantified what the payback is.
In general we tend to go after the quick victory and measure the top line. If it doesn't help sell more product, it becomes a secondary priority. In explaining investments in technology, we've recently been focusing on how it helps companies sell more products. That's the number one question that the decision maker wants answered: if I do this, will it help me sell more stuff? We clearly think it does.
Standardized, rich, full product information is essential to help customers make the correct selection. The biggest obstacle has been in identifying the ROI. When you talk about efficiencies and improved supply chain, it sounds too vague to them. They want to know "Will I get a sales increase out of this?" and the answer to that increasingly is yes.
The answer you get from management is different from what you get when you ask the actual catalog managers what the obstacles are. They say inadequate resources are the number one obstacle to faster adoption of the standards. The fact is that, as an industry, we under-invest in technology and management continues to expect that product catalog and data managers can continue to accomplish "more with less" year after year. The discretionary resources needed to perform a data transformation or conversion to support the industry standard are simply not available. Every available resource is committed 110%. Therefore, some companies continue to run inefficiently and with excess data management costs because they choose not to invest in the staffing needed to improve their efficiency and business processes. It's a catch-22, because until they invest and break some people loose to address their data issues, they will continue the inefficient data practices of the last several decades.
How is the AAIA encouraging data standards adoption?
Those efforts are twofold. Very consciously, as a standards-setting body, we've stabilized the standards. They've stopped changing. That's a great way to encourage adoption. We are also concentrating on training and educational materials in 2009 that will bring the next level of adoptees along. Folks who are more sophisticated have done it. They've got it. So we're focusing on training and education, while at the same time keeping standards themselves stable.
We're seeing tremendous momentum behind the ACES standard. I cited that in my presentation at AAPEX. There is a growing number of data receivers who require it, and we published our Technology Roadmap to help decision makers evaluate how many trading partners support the standards.
PIES is also growing. It seems to follow the catalog data because it's broader. It's a little more difficult to find one set of requirements to satisfy all trading partners. You might have a distributor who wants 20 or so attributes. A more sophisticated retailer might be looking for 60 or 70 attributes, and now you've got to start authoring and gathering and creating content beyond what you been accustomed to.
Have similar data standardization initiatives among general retailers like Wal-Mart had any impact on standards adoption in the aftermarket?
We've tried to capitalize on the data requirements of Wal-Mart and other big box retailers, but found that their requirements are different enough from automotive specialty retailers that it really hasn't helped us much. Wal-Mart put all their weight behind the Global Data Synchronization Network operated by GS1, and we've found that there were lots of attributes that we require in automotive that GS1 didn't support, and there were a lot of things that GS1 required that automotive distributors didn't care about. It's not a very natural fit.
How has the economy impacted technology initiatives in the aftermarket?
I haven't heard of any projects being cancelled due to the current economy. Work in progress is continuing, and I absolutely believe that those companies that continue to invest in improving their data and those processes for delivering it to their customers will be winners when we come out on the other side.
