Dec.19, 2017—CCC announced its continued support for the export of Estimate Management Standard (EMS) files. Also announced were changes to its CCC Secure Share network.
Both announcements follow heavy consideration of previously received industry feedback and criticism.
Prior to the decision, CCC’s original plan was to discontinue EMS by April 2018 and move into transferring data to business message specification (BMS), claiming it was more secure and up-to-date.
Ending EMS support meant that CCC’s users would not be able to share data with Secure Share vendors and that there would be a 50-cent charge per work file, in addition to a registration fee.
Now, Secure Share, which helps shops encrypt and sort customer repair data, will be free and has updated its terms of agreement.
EMS will also remain as is.
“CCC is committed to facilitating efficient, collaborative and secure communication between our customers and the business partners they rely on to operate successfully,” says Mark Fincher, vice president of market solutions, CCC. “We’ve had ongoing discussions with customers and industry stakeholders on the best ways to do that and today’s announcement is in response to that feedback. Repairers and application providers will now have more choice and flexibility in how they work with one another.”
In a Collision Industry Conference (CIC) meeting last April, the implications of the original BMS plan raised concerns amongst the crowd. A panel was led by industry veteran Frank Terlep, CTO of Repairify, Inc., who spearheaded a task force to examine how shop operators can best react to the Secure Share program, that was planned to be fully implemented by April 2018.
The main question posited by Terlep's panel was: Who owns customer information data that’s transmitted through the Secure Share program? One panelist deemed CCC Secure Share a threat to the e-commerce of the collision repair industry.
“None of this would be an issue,” said Virginia shop owner Barry Dorn, “if you didn’t have a player [CCC] that was 70 percent of the market. … That’s a huge implication.”
With the recent announcement, Secure Share will continue to enable the secure distribution of data between collision repairers and third-party app providers, free of charge.
