Sloan Transportation Products says it recently became the first parts manufacturer to establish a real-time parts information connection to the independent aftermarket through the HDX Services’ Price File Library system. Sloan unveiled its solution to enhance the functionality of the system in a presentation at the recent Fall HDX Technology Conference in Atlanta.
Kay Chambers, manager of information technology for Sloan Transportation Products, demonstrated how the company has greatly simplified the process of updating price information and how it can benefit distributors downstream. “Our customers want better and faster data,” Chambers says, “and they want to get the data without having to go through extra steps. Through our Web services programming, we can now update our product information, including price changes, in real time. And through the HDX PFL, our customers can begin to automate the price loading processes – a task that had required an extensive amount of manual labor.”
The PFL is an Internet-based product designed to allow manufacturers to efficiently distribute pricing and product information to their customers in a secure and standardized format. The database architecture of the PFL is based on HDX’s Price Communications File Specification Standard, and can be delivered to the specific distributor in multiple formats, importable to all major spreadsheet and database programs.
“The presentation by Kay was the talk of our event,” says Edward Kuo, executive director of HDX. “She demonstrated the ease of connecting her business system to the Price File Library interface, and how the PFL will enable distributors and manufacturers to focus on their core mission of selling parts and providing service to customers.”
For more information on Sloan Transportation Products technology or products, contact your Sloan distributor, phone (800) 336-7778, e-mail [email protected] or go to www.sloantrans.com. For more information on HDX Services, phone (616) 682-9900 or go to [email protected]. Additional details on the PFL, as well as the PCFS standard, are available on the HDX website at www.hdexchange.com.
