According to a report published by FIGIEFA (Automotive Aftermarket Distributors):
“The independent data publishers/catalogue providers are the preferred source of information for parts identification. This is because these providers offer an important aggregation function”.
Aggregation consists of relating the IAM parts reference numbers of an independent distributor to one or several OE/OEM reference numbers. This aggregation carries out an important function of simplifying the products necessary to provide service to the aftermarket.
Data aggregation is done by independent providers (IAM) based on information existing in the market. The problem is that, at first, the only information available in the market is the information provided by the OEs (parts manufacturers) and OEM reference numbers have, in principle, no relation with other reference numbers existing at that moment, or at least are not known or they don’t want to publish them.
As the years pass, IAM providers gradually relate more and gradually improve the level of aggregation of their reference numbers.
All automotive parts providers have a database that contains all their knowledge about their products and IAM reference numbers in order to serve their customers.
If you use your own catalogue data to serve your customers, you are not taking into account all the existing solutions on the market.
If you complement your catalogue data with the data of one or more of your providers (by either using their catalogues or third party catalogues that contain aggregations of data of different providers), you take into account only what they know or want you to know and, in any case, this knowledge is totally isolated among them.
The solution is to integrate the catalogue data of all existing vehicle parts providers into a single database and use clustering algorithms, in order to managed to very significantly increase the knowledge available.
This integration and therefore have available, all possible existing solutions that have not yet been explicitly published in any provider’s catalogue.
The level of interoperability measures the volume of connectivity (solutions) that exist between a particular provider’s reference numbers and IAM).
We have quantified the increase in the level of interoperability achieved as at least 25%, thanks to the clustering of data, with regard to the main IAM codifications. This means a substantial increase in the level of service we can offer our clients at any given moment.
Currently, there are independent electronic catalogues on the market that provide the highest level of service thanks to the use of Big Data and artificial intelligence techniques.
Partsfinder + Elecsys catalogue. Information systems for automotive parts.
