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The Independent Automotive Aftermarket Federation

TecAlliance launches data quality offensive

Date: Thursday 18 February 2021

Access to correct and up-to-date vehicle and product information is essential for success in the automotive aftermarket. TecAlliance, one of the world's leading data specialists for the digital automotive aftermarket, is working hard to constantly optimise data quality in its TecDoc Catalogue. Andreas Assmann, Director Data Quality Management at TecAlliance, explains how the quality of catalogue data affects sales success and which measures are planned to strengthen the competitiveness of all participants in the automotive aftermarket.

High quality standards ensure long-term customer satisfaction
Correct and up-to-date catalogue data must always be available at the point of service (PoS) to ensure success in the automotive aftermarket. Customers have a positive shopping experience when they can identify the correct product reliably, correctly and quickly based on the available catalogue data. This leads to a reduction in the return rate, which enables cost savings.

“There is a direct correlation between the quality of the data and the quality of the customer's decision-making,” Assmann explains. “For excellent data quality in the TecDoc Catalogue, the information demand and the information supply should match. Catalogue data that optimally support the parts identification process bring sustainable sales success and build trust in the underlying database. Credibility and trust can be increased most sustainably through positive experiences and certification of the data’s high quality standard – such as those we award to Certified Data Suppliers and now to Premier Data Suppliers.”

Driving the success of digital information systems
The success of parts identification directly depends on the quality of the available data and product identification offered in the online catalogue systems.

“Online catalogue systems are only as successful as the quality of their underlying data. Accordingly, data quality plays a major role in value creation; it is its strongest driver. Only if product data, product/vehicle linkages and vehicle data are complete, up-to-date and correct is it possible to identify products efficiently at the point of service,” explains Assmann.

Data quality ensures competitiveness
Ever since its foundation more than 25 years ago, TecAlliance has been committed to the continuous improvement of data quality and the establishment of uniform industry standards. Technical advances and the increasing complexity of vehicles are making it more and more difficult for suppliers to precisely work out the differentiating features that are necessary, for example, to distinguish among several products for the same vehicle, as well as to generally provide correct product/vehicle linkages.

“All digital business models are based on data as a resource. Data quality is not 'nice to have' for companies but a critical factor for success. In a digital world, only suppliers of products that have their data quality under control are successful in the market,” Assmann says. “In the past year, we have once again significantly increased our activities in this area and, as part of our Data Quality Offensive 2020, have taken numerous additional measures to further increase data quality and significantly increase the competitiveness of IAM information systems. In addition to compliance with the TecDoc standard, we now also check the concrete product-related content supplied with the data, such as the text modules. In this way, we want to ensure that day-to-day business can be successfully organised at the PoS with the parts identification systems of the IAM and prevent customers from switching to the identification systems of the OEMs. We are supporting our data suppliers with new rules and guidelines so that they can best cope with these challenges.”

New guidelines for data suppliers
TecAlliance has established standardised production and update processes for TecDoc data by defining numerous guidelines in the form of validations and KPIs for data suppliers. These ensure that the data meet the following quality requirements: They are error-free, clearly interpretable, standardised, uniformly presented, understandable, relevant, complete and up-to-date – all to meet the information needs at the PoS.

“The new DQM guidelines support data suppliers in optimising the processing of their data. Due to the extensive adjustments in the TecDoc product data classification system, they have to scrutinise their entire attributions and in some cases make considerable changes. We support them by providing appropriate reports and implementing new functions and validations in our data management tools. The reports directly show the potential for improvement, which can then be worked through in a structured way,” says Assmann.
“With efficient data quality management, we ensure the supply of high-quality catalogue data to the IAM and thus make an important contribution to the success of all market participants,” Assmann concludes.