In the rapidly evolving automotive industry, staying competitive and profitable requires more than just offering quality products. To succeed, businesses need to efficiently manage product data and ensure seamless compatibility with a wide range of vehicles. This is where the Auto Care Association’s ACES® (Aftermarket Catalog Enhanced Standard) and PIES™ (Product Information Exchange Standard) standards come into play. These standards provide a structured way to manage and exchange automotive product data. At AAPEX, the Auto Care Association explored three powerful ways to boost your sales by leveraging ACES and PIES standards:

1. Perform a Catalog Assessment

Designed to identify discrepancies, a catalog assessment helps companies quickly rectify errors in their data. Doing so supports the standards mission of enabling standards subscribers to remove duplicated communication and distribution efforts, save time and money, lower supply chain costs, increases product introduction and speed to market, and increase your sales, operational efficiencies, and reduced returns.

Auto Care recently launched a new tool that is free to use for Auto Care Data Standards subscribers and is the fastest assessment available in the aftermarket.

2. Expand your coverage with new regions in the VCdb

We’re happy to report that six more regions are being added to the Latin America VCdb. Our new regions are El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, which brings our region count up to 17 with more to come! In the last six months, we have added 714 unique light duty vehicles covering model years 1987-2023.

By any chance do you have parts that fit or customers looking for parts for any of the following vehicle types? Motorhome/recreational and multipurpose military vehicles have been added to the North America medium and heavy-duty truck VCdb and stand-alone medium/heavy duty engines have been added to the North America Off-Highway and Equipment VCdb.

A special thank you to our partners, Integrated Data Facts (IDF) and MOTOR Information Systems who have been instrumental in providing great content for the Latin American countries along with new model year vehicles and new vehicle type groups.

3. Ensure you’re using the most recent versions

With thousands of lines of data, the potential for problems with data exists that might not be identifiable with the naked human eye in an expedient manner (especially without copious amounts of caffeine and manhours). In fact, there are probably a litany of things missing from your files today that could hinder your sales. The #1 mistake you could be making with your ACES and PIES files? Using an old version. At a minimum, you should be using at least version 4 or higher of ACES. Using any previous versions means you’re not able to send sub brands or other critical part information. Also ensure you’re using the latest version of the VCdb, PCdb, Qdb as well now that they are receiving weekly updates.

Click here to learn more about the power of the Auto Care Association’s Data Standards.