How The eCat Changed Everything

In the days when the paper catalogue was the only option, the task of locating the right part fast fell to a class of counterperson known for their immediate recall of obscure part numbers and interchanges; the faster their recall, the more valuable they were to the business and the customer.

Even when they had to refer to the books, the most grizzled veterans would know exactly where to look, even when that source would seem to defy logic at first glance. They’d note the exceptions and the omissions by heart. They knew what fit what, even when there wasn’t a scrap of printed paper to tell them.

And then the catalogue got smart–sort of, anyway.

When Activant (then operating as Triad) launched its e-Cat in 1984, it contained 30,000 partnumbers–anaemic by today’s standards, where any e-cat worth its bytes has to handle millions.

While it’s virtually impossible to work in today’s aftermarket without an electronic catalogue behind your parts information, there was something tangible about receiving that annual print catalogue directly from the manufacturer. It was a time when the manufacturer’s proprietary data wasn’t given to third-party information suppliers and didn’t have to be translated into various formats before it reached the counterperson.

There is no doubt that today’s electronic cataloguing software has made jobbers more efficient, more productive, more accurate, and allowed them to seek new opportunities that might have previously resulted in a lost sale. However, when it comes to cataloguing, in the translation from paper-based to electronic resources some things remain less than perfect.

Consider the following statement from Jim Franco, president of Autologue Computer Systems, who also has twenty years’ experience as a counterperson: “[In the past], catalogues were free from the manufacturers and it was their proprietary right to expose all of their products in their catalogue. I would sometimes buy a product line because of the ease of use of their catalogue.”

Another criticism is that the interaction between the jobber and the customer has fizzled in the wake of Internet purchasing and technicians having the same accessibility to parts as the counterperson.

“Developing a relationship with the customer was huge. Not only that but the technicians actually relied on the counterperson, because they believed that the counterperson was more knowledgeable than the technician was,” continues Franco. “While that wasn’t necessarily true, it was perceived that way. They had the books, the catalogues.”

Then & Now

Scott Sallstrom is the owner of B&J Parts & Machine in Port Coquitlam, B.C. In addition to having roots in Port Coquitlam as an auto parts supplier for 40 years–the business was started by his parents, Bill and Joyce Sallstrom, in 1968–the firm has the distinction of being one of the first jobber stores to purchase Activant’s Triad software in the mid ’80s.

“In the early days, the really experienced counterpeople were hesitant to go to the electronic catalogue, which made sense. In those days, often the experienced counterperson won the battles in that they were quicker than the electronic catalogue. The one thing that you did know for certain is the printed catalogues were more complete,” says Sallstrom. “It didn’t take long for that to change.”

When Activant’s Triad software was first released to the public on August 15, 1984, it was comprised of 30,000 part numbers for a few hundred thousand applications. Today, the number of replacement parts and application easily ranks in the millions, as a result of parts proliferations in the ’80s and ’90s. But it has also changed in the way the information is accessed.

“The counterperson today is a combination of experience and [expertise at utilizing] the amount of information given to them. While counterpeople in the past had to be very knowledgeable, often shuffling between different catalogues for application and pricing, today our software offers a comprehensive list of suppliers for jobbers to choose from,” says Paul Magin, vice-president of cataloguing for Activant Solutions Inc. “And while it’s true that we offer the most comprehensive coverage when it comes to data, there are now also different ways users can view that information. Each part is presented in exactly the same manner, so the technician can see the same information as the counterpeople. Also, the tools and interfaces are easy to use for looking up things like prices, good/better/ best lines, and other necessary information.”

“More manufacturers have gotten on board with the most current standards and they’re adopting the newest technology in terms of their in-house IT infrastructure. When cataloguing started out it was all manual input,” says Jerry Fugina, president of Rinax. “It’s certainly being adopted more at the [technician] level. I think that’s what’s going to be driving electronic cataloguing as we move forward. The technicians were the last part of the supply chain to adopt the use of electronic cataloguing. As they do so they’re finding it’s more efficient, it makes for fewer errors, and there’s not as much lost in translation between themselves and the jobber.”

In speaking with various jobbers across Canada, a noticeable reoccurring trend starts to emerge. The owner or manager of the store, usually older, in his ’50s or ’60s, would sometimes pass along e-cataloguing questions to younger counterpeople.

This only made sense. On the one hand, they’re the staff using the software in-field every day, utilizing many of the features integrated into the software. Looking at it from a different perspective, while one of the features of electronic cataloguing is its accessibility, many jobbers use out-of-date operating systems that don’t fully utilize all of the functions capable with today’s e-cataloguing software. Similarly, many still rely on paper catalogues for at least a portion of their business.

Continued on page 20 “It’s a combination why some jobbers don’t use (or use very little) e-cataloguing software,” says Michel Maheux, interim president of Carrus Technologies Inc. “The first is cost and how much of today’s electronic catalogue is still very expensive; the second is jobbers refusing to change their work habits because of a lack of adequate training, either in-person or online. Few jobbers are ‘power users’ when it comes to electronic cataloguing and only utilize about 20-30% of its capabilities.”

“[The market] is getting more fragmented, in that years ago you only had Activant and that was it–you only had their catalogue. Then you ended up with Activant or Wrenchead. Now you’ve got just about all the retailers that develop their own electronic catalogues and all the manufacturers feed them their ‘standardized’ data,” says Ron Garand, vice-president of Vertical Development Inc., a company that helps automotive aftermarket manufacturers create and manage catalogue production. “Now you’ve got the different buying groups starting to do the same thing as a competitive edge. In doing that they can tie in all of their comparable store inventories together and do a lot of reporting that they’re unable to do in today’s world. A lot of this [started occurring] in the last five or six years.”

As a result, manufacturers have had to custom-tailor their proprietary parts information to meet the formats of each third-party information supplier. And while the closest in terms of industry standards has been the transition to the ACES/PIES standardized format, some manufacturers have voiced complaints, and believe there is a better model out there.

What’s new?

One model to come out of this has been the not-for-profit organization Free-Cat. Free-Cat.com is an online initiative that has gathered parts information from eight of the largest manufacturers in North America (Affinia, Bosch, Cardone, Dayco, Federal-Mogul, Gates, Standard Motor Products, and Tenneco) and essentially offered it online for free in co-op
eration with manufacturers. “What happened in our transition [from paper catalogue to electronic] was a lot of different players started getting in-between things. Not to imply that they didn’t all do good and valuable things, but each one did it his own way, each one did it with his own little spin. Each did it with his own point of competitive advantage. And we ended up with a situation where it was simply taking too long for data to get to the market,” says Bob Moore, founder of Free-Cat.

Today, it can take as long as three to six months before parts information reaches the aftermarket counterperson’s screen. And this does not include any mistakes once a part is road-tested in the market and any mistakes are discovered and corrected.

“It just took too long to get the inaccuracies fixed. What we said was, ‘What would happen if you really tried to identify the smallest number of manufacturers and go back to that old model? Each manufacturer takes responsibility for its data, gets it put together, gets it sent out there, and gets it to the market as quickly as possible.’ That’s what we wanted to do, construct a model that really replicated the old paper catalogue distribution.

” Twenty-five years later, we’re starting to see the cracks begin to appear in adopting a distributor-centric method of delivering parts information quickly and accurately to the point of sale. Without going into too much detail, some of these challenges include slow-to-market updates; the adoption of ACES/PIES; third-party control limiting competition and data distribution; a lack of information with regards to heavy-duty, medium-duty, and “other”-motive applications; piracy of data information; and, of course, the excessive preparation costs in suppliers required to adapt master data into several formats.

One solution that’s gaining steam in North America has been Opticat, a joint venture between Mindquest Inc. in Utah and TecDoc in Europe. In 1996, many of the European aftermarket companies got together to create TecDoc, a manufacturer-driven data cooperative, essentially a one-stop central depository of parts information for manufacturers.

“Opticat was created as a methodology for getting more of a manufacturer-centric kind of parts catalogue model, as opposed to what North America uses, which is distributor-centric, meaning typically a third party takes control of the cataloguing information by acquiring the data by whatever means they can get it from the manufacturers,” says Brad Duncan, CEO of Mindquest Inc. and leading frontrunner of Opticat Inc.

“They would then take that information and provide it to distributors and to shops on a fee-based basis on a couple of fronts. They would create an Internet site, but in order to do transactions (i. e., ordering parts from one party to another), the people that would control the catalogue would charge transaction fees and other fees in the middle of that, amongst other things. There are other things that they’re charging fees for that Opticat and its members believe are not the right model.”

The idea has already gained the support of more than a dozen of North America’s big aftermarket players.

If adopted, the information would effectively transition electronic cataloguing once more from a distributor-centric model to the European-style method that is manufacturer-driven.

One key difference would be that existing third-party suppliers of information wouldn’t be left out of the loop. They could opt in to the system as well and receive the same information as their jobber/technician counterparts. Manufacturers supplying their own proprietary data would be charged a fee of US$500 per month per brand to participate. Aftermarket data users of the Web-based service would be charged a nominal fee of US$500 per month to use the system.

Since its introduction, the e-Cat has gone from acuriosity– sometimes ridiculed for its slowness and shortcomings–to a tool so important that the pressure to have it improve is unceasing.

Even when electronic cataloguing was first introduced in 1984, nobody could have predicted the changes brought about by the Internet, technology, and the sheer amount of information computers can store today.

Perhaps it is best summed up by Brian Murphy, CEO of WHI Solutions Inc. and creator of Wrenchead:

“Where I see the immediate future in the next twelve to eighteen months, the fastest segment of the aftermarket by far, is Internet parts sales, either business-to-business or business-to-consumer. The great thing about that is the Internet is the perfect medium for the catalogue, because you have the ability to serve up an infinite amount of data.

“In the past you were very much restricted to how much memory was on the jobber’s hard drive, or whether or not you had fast or slow Internet connectivity. It’s just difficult to push that amount of data displayed in catalogues on a client’s single system. The Internet doesn’t have that restriction.”