Data Synchronization

Recently several of the major retail chains sent out letters to their suppliers requesting that they put their prouduct data in a standardized format to decrease data inaccuracies and to help speed the data to the parts counter. The standards have been developed over the past 8 or 10 years through the efforts of the trade orgs, most notably the AAIA, SEMA and MEMA. They are the Product Information Exchange Standards (PIES) and the Aftermarket Catalog Enhanced Standards (ACES). The information on these standards is available at Aftermarket.org.
Standardized data cuts costs, speeds information to the marketplace and enables a broad range of analysis including data mining, knowledge discovery, supply chain enhancements, better enhanced line review and category management. In the near future the retail chains will be increasing the pressure on manufacturers by changing their recommendation for data standards into demand, making data standardization a prerequisite for doing business with them. I guess I should mention one further development which is Data Certification (DAC). This is a software program that a mfr can run their data through to certify its compliance with the standards. More info at http://www.aftermarket.org/eCommerce/Pies/Pies_DAC.asp

Once the product and/or fitment data complies with the standards, trading partners must then synchronize their databases so that future distributions of the product data can occur without human intervention. The data provider will most likely need to synchronize his/her data with multiple trading partners who are the recipients of that data. A few years back this process was undertaken by Affinia and O'Reilly Auto Parts. They generated a white paper describing the process.

For more information or for a copy of the Affinia/O'Reilly white paper, please email danj@digstrat.com