Three key providers of electronic vehicle parts and service information have combined their expertise to offer aftermarket customers an enhanced service. TecDoc, TecCom and AuDaCon have come together to form the TecAlliance.

The three Europe-wide service providers of information on vehicles, spare parts, repair and maintenance in the automotive aftermarket merged in July as part of restructuring process that began a year ago with the merger of TecCom and AuDaCon AG. While the brand identities of TecDoc and TecCom remain unchanged, AuDaCon will operate in future as TecRMI in the interests of a unified brand identity.

The name TecAlliance stands for standardised, industry-wide product and vehicle data under the brand TecDoc, as well as repair and maintenance information under the brand TecRMI, with RMI being the abbreviation for Repair and Maintenance Information. TecCom automates and simplifies the entire order management process between component manufacturers and the parts wholesalers, via online dialogue or Electronic Data Interchange. This eliminates the use of paper and manual input.

Jürgen Buchert, Managing Director of TecAlliance said, “The intention behind the merger of TecDoc and TecCom is the provision of well proven sector solutions from a single source. We are now working together to develop TecRMI into the industry standard for repair and maintenance information. In the near future, the independent vehicle aftermarket will be able to use the solutions in a modular, but highly integrated manner. Bringing together all necessary repair information and automating the entire value chain reduces costs on a sustainable basis.”

A further reason for the three sector experts coming together is the ongoing growth in the demands of the automotive sector as a whole when it comes to the availability of clear, up-to-date parts information and technical data. Due to the increasingly complex and wide-ranging technical equipment of modern vehicles, the research of all necessary information for workshops, fleet operators and others in the market is becoming increasingly difficult and therefore more time consuming. Jürgen Buchert commented, “The rapid availability of technical information and its cost effective processing are the be-all and end-all in the aftermarket. With the formation of TecAlliance, we are now able to deliver tailor-made solutions for the IAM from a simple source. We want to offer our customers further major benefits and continue to consolidate our strong position in all key automotive markets.”

The merger will provide garages and factors in the Irish market with improved information access while organisational synergies will also see new information made available even faster.

Currently Tec Doc has information on some 3.9 million articles covering 52,000 car types and 45,000 commercial vehicle types. This includes 2.4 million images and is available in 28 languages.

TecRMI will now be able to complement this with more than 4 million items of technical information and some 13 million repair times. It also contains 90,000 service plans and half a million repair instructions. This data is available in 19 languages and cover 90% of the European car parc.