April 23, 2014—PartsTrader announced Wednesday that it has completed the national deployment of its electronic parts procurement system.
As of April 17, collision repairers and parts suppliers in all 48 continental states and the District of Columbia can use the program, regardless of direct repair program (DRP) affiliation.
The initial national rollout began in August 2013 and has been received with angst from the collision repair industry, mostly due to the system’s inclusion in State Farm Insurance’s Select Service DRP.
PartsTrader is a web-based platform that allows repair facilities to put out parts orders to a number of suppliers, and receive bids on those orders. PartsTrader announced its supplier fee system last December.
The goal of the system, according to PartsTrader, is to “provide a platform that positions repairers at the center of the parts procurement process.”
State Farm has made the parts procurement system a requirement for its Select Service shops in a number of states, a policy that has been met by plenty of response from industry associations such as the Automotive Service Association and the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers of New Jersey.
Since launching its initial pilot 25 months ago, PartsTrader has processed more than 750,000 quote requests, the company said in a release. Average response time from suppliers has been less than 15 minutes. Those quote requests have generated more than 1 million confirmed parts orders.
"Our core application is now very different from when we started over two years ago," PartsTrader CEO Rob Cooper said. "We are committed to giving repairers and suppliers a product of choice by continuing to adapt it to their changing needs. Earlier this year we introduced the industry's first system for tracking two-way repairer and supplier performance feedback. For example, repairers now have the ability to rate suppliers based on service and quality of the parts delivered. This ensures that each party can make a fully informed business decision before placing or responding to an order. Most recently, we've enhanced vehicle mapping capabilities and improved integration with the estimating systems, and have many more exciting features on the near term horizon."
