Demystifying ACES & PIES
Demystifying ACES & PIES
Q: What are ACES & PIES (A & P)
ACES & PIES are data standards organized by the Auto Care Association to streamline the product data exchange in the automotive parts industry.
Q: Why ACES & PIES?
ACES & PIES are two standardized formats to submit product data:
- ACES = Application (fitment) data
- PIES = Product information (weights/dims, attributes, pricing, description, etc.)
Both formats are submitted as XML files (there is no “ACES Excel” or “PIES Excel”).
Q: How do I, as a parts manufacturer, benefit from ACES & PIES?
Providing your product data in the ACES & PIES formats:
- Increases Sales
- Reduces Returns
- Saves Time
Q: How do ACES & PIES increase Sales?
Your customers can easily process your product data to list all of your products more accurately and faster to reduce time to market.
Q: How do ACES & PIES reduce returns?
Accurate product data is key to reducing returns.
Q: How do ACES & PIES save time?
When part manufacturers and their customers talk the "same language" in the product data exchange, the data exchange becomes more efficient to a point where new products and product updates can become available in real-time.
Q: How can I provide ACES & PIES data?
There are two options:
- W/o a partner: Get a subscription to the Auto Care tables to build A & P data yourself.
- W/ a partner: Utilize a 3rd party’s service, which will include the Auto Care subscription and supports you to build the data.
Q: What are the ups/downs of a service provider vs. doing it all by myself?
There are no downs in using a third party. Here are the ups:
- + Your subscription to the ACES & PIES tables is included. Without a service provider, you have to subscribe to the Auto Care tables yourself, which is a subscription of at least $7,818.
- + A service provider's software makes the data generation easy for you. The Auto Care tables contain a lot of information that requires a lot of knowledge to the process.
- + Your data is never finished. A service provider makes it easy to update and improve your product data continuously.
Q: Where is my product data housed?
The data is not automatically hosted anywhere but resides with you. Some third-party services that build your data also do the data distribution.
Q: Who has access to my data?
Since you own your data, you always control who has access to your data. Make sure when selecting a third-party service they don't take ownership of your data.
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