Cambria Automobiles and Ancaster have gone live with Autofinity’s automated parts and accessories ecommerce platform PiHUB.
Launching with Jaguar and Land Rover accessories through its Grange dealer brand, Cambria initially piloted PiHUB with the platform supporting its ecommerce accessories strategy for its JLR businesses with wider roll-out underway across the group including Aston Martin and a leading motorcycle brand.
Cambria’s roll-out follows a five-fold increase in JLR accessories sold in the first month of the system’s operation with an average transaction value of £560.
Ancaster, which represents six brands at 12 locations in south and west London, Surrey, Kent and Berkshire, has also launched PiHUB for its Nissan brand and is already reporting average transactions of £367.
Autofinity’s PiHUB solution automates online accessories retailing with only picking, packing and posting requiring manual intervention. The platform collates and uploads OEM accessories and parts data, and integrates with marketplaces including Amazon, eBay and Shopify as well as the group’s own website.
It means a brand’s full range of accessories, obsolete lines and fast-moving service parts can be marketed online whereas previously just a small selection could be marketed due to time consuming manual input requirements.
Prices and parts numbers are automatically updated, reducing the time to market for accessories and making purchasing simple. Correct postage costs are calculated with integrations with other systems ensuring accurate pricing.
For Cambria, previously, only around a quarter of Jaguar Land Rover accessories were sold online due to manual uploading of items, descriptions, pricing and images whilst inconsistencies were caused by data inaccuracies, eroding margins.
Now the complete range of 1,200 items JLR accessories are available online through a completely automated process. The project has since been rolled out to Kia and Aston Martin with other brands to follow.
Parts commercial lead and business analyst William Hornsey, who has led the development of Autofinity’s PiHUB, said: “Our platform provides an ecommerce solution for the successful and widespread online retailing of accessories, the likes of which most dealer groups have been unable to attain due to the manual requirements of doing so and data inaccuracies.”