Tuesday, 25 June 2013 – Sydney – Global automotive industry business solution developer, Infomedia Ltd, announced today that it has entered into a 3 year agreement with KIA Canada Inc. to produce and supply its highly innovative Microcat® Auto Partsbridge® (APB).
Auto Partsbridge is a business-to-business facilitator. It is a highly specialised, cloud-based solution that supports genuine branded dealers engage with their collision repair customers in new and productive ways. APB empowers body shop operators to order directly from dealers online, after first reviewing required parts from a genuine KIA electronic parts catalogue. Body shop operators can also submit to their dealers, lists of parts that would normally come from non-OE sources. APB then helps dealers calculate competitive offers to gain both the OE parts business and convert their non-OE intentions to OE parts too.
According to Infomedia co-founder and Executive Chairman, Richard Graham, “KIA dealerships in Canada already use our Microcat EPC and Superservice Menus Precision Quoting system. I believe after a rigorous assessment process, KIA Canada identified Auto Partsbridge as being a system that would contribute to higher levels of efficiency and customer satisfaction for their very important body shop customers.”
“Auto Partsbridge has been proven to significantly improve the conversion of body shop intentions to purchase non-genuine parts, to purchasing genuine parts. And it does this in a very user friendly and economically sustainable way. I know our technology will help KIA dealers increase their sales of genuine KIA parts to this important customer category,” he added.
Karen Blunden, Global Director of Business Development and CEO for the Americas, said “KIA has always been progressive in defining solutions that benefit their dealers. We are excited about this opportunity to support KIA Canada and their dealers with the industry leading APB, joining others such as Honda, Hyundai and Toyota, who are also using Auto Partsbridge to competitively price and win part sales.
“Auto Partsbridge is more than just a novel parts ordering system; it effectively deals with the economic issues associated with genuine OE dealers winning more body shop business in the face of aggressive non-genuine competitors. The way I see it, APB is also good for vehicle owners, because it increases the potential of body shops being able to fit genuine OE parts to their damaged vehicles, instead of non-genuine. Better parts, shorter repair time – that’s a win-win for vehicle owners in my view.”
“APB has been a quite-achiever for a number of years. But we are seeing signs that dealers around the world are more keen to expand their body shop trade business and our technology is moving to the forefront of their options to help achieve that.” Mr Graham concluded.
