One electronic catalog software upstart shares clues on taking control of the digital transformation

The customer experience

A marketing director for AEM Performance Electronics who has been inside the PartsHub cloud since 2017 said that their model has “worked as advertised.” Yet, as online shopping goes, content rules. For instance, installers hunting for one of AEM’s cold air intake kits will encounter differing versions on AutoZone’s and Summit Racing Equipment’s website. Presentation could well indeed tilt the sale in either direction.

Meanwhile, an unwieldly force that the pundits have been forewarning about for many years is here. New distribution methods are mainstream. Big data and analytics are part of maintenance and repair activities. Car owners are more sophisticated than ever about vehicle care. Chapin’s idealism of customer connectivity generated by network effects is fanning out over the industry terrain by the multitude of services specializing in shop management, parts ordering, online diagnostics and mobile payment.

To sort this out, research firm Roland Berger calls this trend online to offline or O2O because the consumer starts with an online search and ends at a physical location. Take scheduling an appointment to service a vehicle. The online search begins vetting a garage who in turn confirms via text messaging the appointment where after the electronic diagnosis is signaled to the service writer who shoots a second text to the customer to approve the job. Like a silent auction, the shop compares multiple ecommerce site prices paired with the fastest delivery. Offline, the merchant ships the parts to the service department who messages their customer to make electronic payment on time to pick up the car.

The report concludes that as O2O blurs, parts suppliers who remain in their own world risk severing their brand linkage with the traditional three-step distribution chain from the wholesaler to the repair shop onto the customer. Roland Berger suggests tweaking the four classic Ps of marketing — pricing, placement, promotion and product. Instead, parts suppliers need to redirect their brand focus on customer personalization by way of digital marketing, omnipricing, one-day fulfillment and customer intimacy all bundled into one package to appeal to the Millennials and the Generation Zs.

Next year, they will capture 40 percent of all sales transactions. Tech firms along the lines of an eBay, Repair Pal, Snap-On, Openbay, Auto Butler and the like represent a bridge to support their aftermarket partners to connect with this smartphone-bred group seeking vehicle repair or do-it-yourself maintenance. Acting on his own vision adopted from outside industries, PartsHub embraces any opportunity to leap beyond the utilitarian role of ACES/PIES content management by advising their suppliers to redefine their brand’s rapport with their shoppers.

Roland Berger’s analysis argues that online content is holding sway over purchase decisions. Nowadays YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat and many other social networks are prime destinations to learn about products while being entertained by each other’s animated “stories.” A millennial himself, who cut his tech teeth in a price comparison search engine site, Chapin is intent on stretching the value of the mundane catalog that gets the bad rap as merely a one-dimensional tool to match the vehicle model with the proper replacement part.

To live up to a service-heavy promise, two sticky challenges lay ahead that applies to any software service that wants to step up their commitment. First is winning the account’s buy-in about the financial effects of ignoring real-time connectivity, virtual inventory and e-commerce sites that are tied into their livelihood. One way to motivate reinvention toward sales opportunities is to regularly present actionable data showing exactly where the do-it-yourselfer and the do-it-for-me person directly impacts the bottom line. Generic or high-level facts just will not do. A hands-on partnership that promises to reposition the brand image is at stake. This explains why PartsHub works closely with their stakeholders to leverage full creativity over how their content fits in with their retailer’s virtual inventory e-commerce platform. It supports them to effectively drive their business that speaks to their target audience.

The second practical challenge is an agile design approach — the capability to switch up and swap out durable applications for a company that has been operating an older computer system. Consider how name brands are making visual rather than text searches easier for a buyer to find an item. Augmented reality lets someone view to scale objects. Introducing new features will require tech companies to prove that they can seamlessly insert add-ons into their customer’s operations at minimal cost. If a tech service provider aims to own the lion’s share of the platform business, the ultimate deal breaker boils down to building what their customers want, when they want it and as much as they want. In all cases, PartsHub gets the true essence of what personalization means as computing volume expands.

An engaged customer partnership with flexible software businesses can make a profound difference in the O2O marketplace, and perhaps one day, minimize the dependency on Amazon and other third parties. For good reasons, many cloud-based firms, and niche ones too, are setting their sights on personalization. Making it all happen online over mobile devices and greeting the customer in person is no simple jigsaw. Complex technology simplified by PartsHub demonstrates that this model can make life easier in the digital economy.