SOUTH JORDAN, Utah – OptiCat has announced the release of OnTarget, a new data assessment and validation software application, designed to find data discrepancies that slow down products from reaching the market.
Suppliers that use OnTarget to improve their data can increase their speed to market, enhance credibility with customers and remove misinformation at the point of sale to promote increased sales and a reduction of product returns, OptiCat says. OptiCat is owned by MEMA, TecAlliance and key supplier investors.
The product underwent a rigorous development and testing program supported by top suppliers and receivers, the company points out. It consolidates most of the validation processes of the major data receivers into one easy-to-use platform. OnTarget is used in the data distribution process to improve the speed to market by avoiding the multiple, manual, redundant assessment and validation activities that currently occur much later in the process.
"Our users have asked for additional validation tools to streamline data delivery and improve information for the purpose of improving auto parts sell-through at all levels of distribution," said Bryan Thueson, CTO of OptiCat. “OptiCat is receiving rave reviews from early adopters, which use OnTarget to ensure their data is clean and accurate before passing it on to their customers.”
OnTarget is a stand-alone product that can be installed on Windows 7 or 8 OS computers, allowing the user to load and validate any ACES file. The results can be exported to a flat delimited file, which can then be loaded into Excel for analysis, or the OnTarget integrated XML viewer can be used to locate the errors in the data. It also provides percentage of accuracy results for a supplier to benchmark its performance. According to OptiCat, OnTarget quickly and efficiently looks for duplicate records, overlaps, note and record conflicts, quantity conflicts, VCDB and PCDB ID conflicts and position validation as well as positions within part types.
"OnTarget joins the OptiCat suite of products that includes OnBoard, OnDemand and OnSite, signaling our continued commitment to helping suppliers achieve excellence in data delivery," said Charley Johnson, OptiCat’s CEO. "We will continue responding to our customers’ needs by providing services and features that add significant value. We are committed to becoming ‘the’ go-to source for industry-wide, high value, data-related programs benefitting aftermarket suppliers and, by association, their ultimate customers!”
OptiCat says it will add other new features to OnTarget in 2014, including integration with OnBoard, the tool that many leading suppliers are using to manage their data delivery relationships with customers. OptiCat provides a free online demo of OnTarget utilizing customer production data, in real time, to assess data quality, and suggest a path to improvement.
Visit www.opticat.net for more information.
