VIN Basics Blog

Identifying the correct vehicle details and part fitment data by VIN is valuable for many repair shops, parts suppliers, and any other business dealing with the maintenance and service of vehicles. However, VIN data and part fitment data are quite different and therefore not commonly sourced and licensed under the same roof.

Typically, a VIN database and parts fitment catalog will need to be licensed separately and associated or mapped to each other, in order to identify parts for a specific vehicle by VIN. In this article, we cover what to expect from each database as well as how your business may go about identifying vehicle parts by VIN in the most efficient manner.

In a previous article, we discussed how businesses can leverage a commercial VIN decoding solution to identify vehicle specs by VIN, as well as which specs are often included. In this article, we are going to dive into which businesses benefit from this functionality. The short answer is just about any industry that has anything to do with vehicles, their maintenance, financing, insurance, or transportation. Here’s a deeper dive into some of the most popular use cases for vehicle specs identification by VIN:

This post has been republished with updates since its original publish date in July 2013

Quick access to complete and accurate vehicle specifications is necessary for many businesses in the automotive and allied industries. Firstly, I want to clarify that “vehicle specifications” can fit into more than one category. Some businesses may be looking to identify “construction” vehicle specs such as weights, dimensions, capacities, etc., while other businesses may be looking for “operation” and/or “performance” vehicle specs, including engine and transmission, standard and optional equipment, fuel economy, exterior, and interior colors, etc.

Regardless of which vehicle specs your business is looking to identify, scanning through OEM websites, vehicle manuals, or even your own internal management system/DMS often involves more effort than time allows. This is where VIN decoding comes in handy. Identifying vehicle specs by VIN number with the use of a VIN decoding solution is ideal for businesses working with several vehicle makes and models.

Beyond just misleading, limited data can harm your business. Market analyst, Gartner, found that 27% of the data in the Fortune 1000 companies is considered flawed, which they defined as inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicated. According to their research, poor quality data leads to high costs, a high customer turnover rate and excessive expenses. IBM estimates that bad data costs the US economy roughly $3.1 trillion dollars each year. They also found that 1 in 3 business leaders don’t trust the information they use to make decisions. Experian Data, in a separate study, determined that flawed data impacts the bottom line of nearly 90% of all American companies.

VIN barcode scanners are a great feature for many apps in the automotive space, especially for business processes such as scanning in inventory or fleet assets, looking up the specs on a vehicle at auction, or an insurance adjuster resolving claims.

Vehicle data and VIN decoding solutions are widely used across the automotive industry and are the foundation for many businesses. Some of the more common use cases are basic vehicle identification (year, make, model, trim, etc.) or VIN explosion, as covered in the preceding article. However, there are some less obvious uses for vehicle data/VIN decoding that may come as a surprise to you, such as the following:

There are countless ways in which vehicle data/VIN decoding can be leveraged within a business. And while each business’s use case(s) are different, there are common vehicle datasets that are needed to accomplish their goals.

In this article, we’ve covered some of the most common uses of vehicle data.

Understanding how VIN numbers work and what vehicle data can be extracted from them is a challenge, even for auto industry professionals that are familiar with VIN data. We thought it would be helpful to put together a list of common misconceptions for anyone looking for a vehicle data solution, as there’s a good chance at least one of these will resonate with you.

Vehicle subscription services started to surface in 2017 and are now available through a few manufacturers, some dealers, and several third parties including startups and vehicle rental companies. Given the diversity of businesses and level of variability in their business models, understanding how vehicle subscription services work requires a good deal of research.

* This article was a collaboration with our partners Joseph Creese and Howard Abbey at SBD Automotive.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) technology is confusing for consumers and businesses alike. While there are core ADAS features that can function similarly across each OEM, such as forward collision warning, lane keeping, or blind spot monitoring, each OEM offers their unique spin on the different technologies and markets them differently with their own branded names.