Phoenix—Something buggy about an online ordering app proved too stressful for Interstate Auto Repair.
"It was difficult to deal with," recalls Bill Nalu, owner of the Madison Heights, Mich. automotive service center. "Some of the mapping wasn't right when you order parts. It wouldn't pull up, and you would have to figure out the right words to get it right. Add insult to injury, the inventory was out of date." Discouraged by the poor customer experience on the promise that the free app would remove inefficiencies, Nalu switched to a dedicated vendor portal for better workflow.
Even though they have never met, Stan Mirzayez, founder of Parts Detect, a mobile platform designed to find OEM and aftermarket parts promptly, can relate to bottlenecks. With five years in the market, Parts Detect aims to dominate the customer service experience in a competitive market of seemingly identical digital platforms. "What we're doing is bringing value to the shop owners. We're focused on the small to medium-sized operations," said Mirzayez.
Yet with an array of free giveaways in the marketplace, Parts Detect finds itself competing for customers like Bill Nalu, who craves digital convenience.
Since going commercial in 2016, Aftermarket Business World first covered Parts Detect and its focus on availability, location and warranty details. Today the CEO — also a shop owner — located in Phoenix, says that he has the practical know-how to woo the professional installer in the final-mile race.
Helping them find the path to minimal friction consumes a large chunk of Part Detect's energies to define what the customer experience means. Satisfied accounts with the app tell Mirzayez that their techs are even more productive servicing their customers than worrying about hot-shot deliveries.
But aligning with everyone's wants is a challenge — the company has had to braid the application program interface functionality between buyer and seller. "With every supplier, they have their own software. When we go into that kit, it's completely different from the last vendor that we worked with. It takes a whole team effort to decode that coding, then put it together in a format where our algorithm decodes it on a standard basis."
Interstate Auto Repair's painful experience with the Cambridge, Mass.-based PartsTech centered around its failure to upload accurate cataloging information, Nalu said. In his case, the well-meaning engineers could not map the ACDelco brand with Nalu’s suppliers on the backend.
For Mirzayez’s Parts Detect that competes with this app and others, these occasions highlight a missed opportunity, as portions of the commercial repair segment are bypassing these apps in search of a more economical option.
Developing and integrating the software kits behind the scenes to accommodate the cataloging taxonomy is where the rubber meets the road. Vendor by vendor, fitment, images and inventory impose exacting preconditions, says Mirzayez, who has long-standing relationships with Advance Auto Parts, NAPA, eBay Motors, and AutoZone. Always to the best of his ability to bridge that gap, he monitors user feedback that includes an expanding roster of fleets, municipalities, and hundreds of independently owned installation bays. "It definitely takes time when we work with a supplier. We're not cookie-cutter at all," said Mirzayez.
To date, Mirzayez has amassed thousands of supplier locations. Mirzayez foresees more growth from his relationship with Parts Authority to diversify product availability. And by summer, he expects to add another high-profile vendor.
Currently in the making, Parts Detect plans to release a license plate decoder as an alternative to scanning the part by mobile device or inputting the vehicle identification number. Setting apart this downloadable app —via Google Play and Apple Store— from other vehicle component identifiers appears not to intimidate Mirzayez. The winner, he believes, will be the intermediary that can display reliable information such as convenient delivery options and related features, giving the installer the flexibility to communicate with the supplier.
A shop’s perspective
Generally speaking, navigating PartsTech was a smooth process for Interstate Auto Repair, but its inconsistent results troubled Bill Nalu. Twenty percent of the time, the findings contradicted the Bumper-to-Bumper proprietary system, alleged Nalu. Ultimately, that direct ordering portal tied into the program group brought about time-saving efficiencies that he sought.
Industry experts agree that the pandemic lockdown of lesser in-person trips to the parts stores propelled a reliance on technology infrastructure. Eric Lough, former director of data management for PartsTech, which competes with companies like Epicor and Nexpart, defends the software provider’s record on promoting customer loyalty. Its single search mechanism provides a wide range of choices for vendors, which has helped grow PartsTech into a formidable player in the aftermarket, explained Lough.
"How we continue to deliver value through these platforms is a challenge," noted Lough. “Not every customer is going to enjoy our experience or come our way. And yet the oil drops in the same car. In those cases, it's better to get some of the pie than none of it."
Revenue sharing between its suppliers and the digital tech tool app has many supporters. Mirzayez uses an open auction framework that displays the bidder's wares that he calls a production-based model. Vendor partners pay Parts Detect a transactional fee in exchange for each sale. "We sit down with our vendor partners and figure out what exactly fits in their budget and what fits us."
According to David Durazzano, program director of IBM's social business cloud network, he finds hundreds of combinations and structured business models on the internet. To make the app partnership lucrative in the referral arena, there must be a quality customer experience being brought to the table. If features like inventory, distance, or drop-ship factor in, the application interface programmer provider must be savvy enough to facilitate a successful transaction securely. "This way the partner portal can be as accurate as possible, which lends to much better net promoter scores," said Durazzano.
The rise in used cars amid slowing new vehicle production makes the multiple vendor formats more attractive than the single source kind when hunting for scarce parts, says Mirzayez. Someone operating a dedicated line to the local parts store cannot possibly expect 100 percent in stocks in the aging car park, especially for a shop servicing cars and trucks older than 15 years old. "That's why I think Parts Detect is doing a great job alleviating that pain and creating lead generation for suppliers."
Reflecting on last year's events, Lough believes that the restrictive COVID crisis taught the industry how to adapt to physical constraints in the business-to-business market. Distributors and wholesalers picked up the digital pace and delivered supply chain improvements with delivery times and tracking technologies that boosted shop efficiency and increased app usage. Ironically, he pointed out, "I don't think you're going to see a lot of changes around the procurement experience in the commercial space."
And perhaps those changes are an opening for the Parts Detect founder Mirzayez, who sees an inverse relationship that reduced labor costs increase repair order sales. "I think what a lot of these brick-and-mortar shops face and the suppliers face is the number of inbound phone calls," he said. "If we can alleviate one percent of those calls, it's a huge savings."
