CCC Secure Share could dramatically impact your auto body shop following its full implementation in April 2018, in some ways potentially for the better, and in some ways potentially for the worse.

First, the bad news: There’s the potential that vendors — every 0ne of your business partners which relies on estimate data — to pass along hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in increased costs related to accessing information a shop could prior to April 2018 easily provide for free. There’s also the potential a particular business partner will refuse to adapt its software to Secure Share, forcing you to to rekey that information to do business with that company. For practical purposes, CCC will be the gatekeeper of your data.

The good news: The service might foster an explosion of innovative software to help your company and the entire collision repair industry, and you’ll have an easier time directing only specific elements of your estimate to specific companies — rather than anyone with a “data pump” having the ability to see everything on your estimates and use this information to its own ends. The information will also be encrypted, further safeguarding your customer and business’ privacy.

Thoughts for bigger players in the industry: Larger MSOs will see some of these problems and benefits exacerbated, but they might have enough IT resources to build in means of greater in-house data control. Insurers might also ultimately see increased costs passed on by a shop to either the carrier or whatever system a carrier uses to interface with Secure Share, but can be assured of greater customer privacy. Vendors or their parent companies are going to have to eat the $0.50 per-repair-order costs or pass them on to shops (and with the average shop doing 1,000 repairs with multiple vendors, costs would add up), agree to CCC’s terms of use and cede some competitive advantages to CCC — but will immediately have access to CCC’s 19,000 shops to make a sale.

Prior to the discussion of Secure Share on Thursday at the Collision Industry Conference, take a moment to familiarize yourself with our past coverage of all these issues and think about what the initiative will mean for your company and business partners, even if you’re not actually in Pittsburgh for the discussion. We’ve been covering the topic since CCC announced in fall 2016 it would launch Secure Share April 4, 2017, to accompany its plans to cease using the obsolete but enduring EMS data standard in favor of the modern but underused BMS standard.

The two standards, which allow collision repair-related software to “talk” to each other, are products of the independent Collision Industry Electronic Commerce Association and are unrelated to CCC. Secure Share is just a means of managing those standards. (It’s kind of like the W3 Consortium, which develops the HTML language, compared to the provider of a Web browser. The latter provides a means of using that language, but has nothing to do with the underlying standard.)

Got it? And away we go:

Secure Share: What is it?

What are others saying?

Reactions to CCC news: CIECA ‘pretty excited’; Mitchell says EMS should stay

CCC responds to announcement of CIC April task force session on IP’s Secure Share

Secure Share online in soft opening; launch day startup seeing numerous leads

Control of data

A look at ownership, control and service under CCC’s BMS solution for the industry

CCC and its competitors

CCC doesn’t expect competitive benefit from seeing Secure Share B2B relationships

Cost to you

CCC stands by $0.50/estimate Secure Share cost as vendors argue it’ll be passed down to shops

Images:

Collision repairers can access CCC Secure Share through the “Configure” menu option. (Provided by CCC)

QCIQ is one of the two “apps” available on CCC’s Secure Share program as of its April 4, 2017, launch. This image shows how a shop can manage which data is sent to a vendor. (Provided by CCC)

CCC took exception with this slide presented by former CIECA Chairman Frank Terlep at the January 2017 Collision Industry Conference. (Provided by CIC)