REDUCED RETURNS. STRONGER DIGITAL SHELF. READY FOR AI.
Imagine this: a customer is shopping for a car part. They find it; it looks right. They buy it. Two days later, the part arrives, only to not fit their vehicle.
Frustrating for the customer. Costly for the seller: a return, a support ticket, and a little less trust in their brand.
In fact, 45% of shoppers say they’ve returned an online purchase because the product information was incorrect or misleading, according to Salsify’s 2026 Consumer Research report.
Unfortunately, this is still an all-too-common scenario in the automotive aftermarket and has always been the core risk of bad fitment data.
What’s changed is the scale at which it can happen.
Long gone are the days when your product data just lives on your website. It flows downstream across marketplaces, retailer portals, B2B platforms, and increasingly, AI-powered search and recommendation engines. Every one of those channels is a place where inaccurate or incomplete data can reach a customer before you ever know there’s a problem. And AI doesn’t just surface bad data. It amplifies it.
ACES and PIES remain the foundation of accurate product and fitment data in the automotive aftermarket. ACES governs vehicle fitment; PIES handles product specs, attributes, and digital assets. Together, they define what good data looks like… but in 2026, good data means more than compliance. It means being ready for what’s next.
The Challenges Haven't Gone Away. They've Multiplied.
If your company is still relying on spreadsheets or disjointed systems to manage ACES & PIES standards, you’re likely facing significant hurdles:
Data Overload
Your product catalog keeps growing. Managing fitment and specs across hundreds or thousands of SKUs, along with keeping that data consistent across every channel, becomes unsustainable without the right infrastructure.
Inconsistent data downstream
The aftermarket moves fast: new vehicles, new parts, evolving standards. To win on the digital shelf, you need to push accurate, complete data to market faster than your competitors.
Channel complexity
Your data needs to show up correctly on your Ecommerce site, Amazon, retailer portals, B2B platforms, and increasingly, in AI-powered search results. Each channel has its own requirements. Manual processes don’t scale.
Speed to market
Without a centralized system, product information drifts. A spec updated in one place doesn’t flow through. Fitment data conflicts. Customers get the wrong part and lose trust.
These challenges aren’t new.
What’s new is the cost of not solving them.
How PIM Supports ACES & PIES Management
A Product Information Management (PIM) system creates a single source of truth for all your product data, ensuring accuracy and alignment with ACES & PIES standards across every channel. Today, that’s merely the baseline.
PIM done right in 2026 means it’s the engine behind every digital experience your products are part of. This encompasses everything from the product page that converts, the fitment result that a customer can trust, and the marketplace listing that appears complete.
How this looks in practice:
Centralization
All of your product and fitment information lives in one place. No more spreadsheets, no more data silos. Updates are faster, governance is simpler, and everyone is working from the same source.
Automated data updates
Changes like new SKUs, spec changes, and fitment additions are being propagated across every channel automatically. Your ACES & PIES data stays current without manual intervention.
Error reduction at scale
The right data foundation enables effective automation. When your ACES & PIES data is clean and centralized, automated workflows can validate fitment, syndicate updates, and flag inconsistencies without compounding any errors.
Digital shelf readiness
Customers find your product across channels. With a modern enterprise PIM, you ensure that at each touchpoint your products show up – and show up correctly, giving your customers the confidence to buy.
To truly make a difference, PIM can no longer be solely focused on centralizing product data and enforcing compliance.
Instead, PIM should serve as the foundation that empowers you to enhance your digital experience, which will ultimately be the key to your competitive advantage in 2026.
The New Frontier: ACES & PIES in the Age of Agentic Commerce
The democratization of AI has completely changed the buying process and introduced the concept of Agentic Commerce.
Think autonomous AI agents that research, compare, and complete purchases on your behalf. This has become an integral part of how products get bought. According to Syndigo‘s 2025 Advisory Board research, 61% of consumers now start product discovery in AI assistants before ever visiting a retailer’s website.
Agentic Commerce depends on one thing: clean, structured, centralized product data.
This raises the stakes on data quality in a way that’s fundamentally new.
It’s no longer just about whether a human customer sees the right fitment on a product page. It’s about whether your data is structured well enough to be consumed by AI agents.
An AI agent making a vehicle compatibility call is only as good as the ACES & PIES data it’s pulling from.
What ‘Ideal’ Looks Like in 2026
ACES & PIES data is owned in one system, not managed in multiple sources
Product data is enriched beyond minimum compliance: full attributes, digital assets, marketing copy
Data governance is proactive. Validation happens at input, not at syndication
Product and digital commerce teams work hand-in-hand, not siloed.
Product information is structured for both human and machine consumption.
Conclusion
Fundamentally, managing ACES & PIES has always been about accuracy. About getting the right part for the right vehicle.
A PIM system is still the ideal system to host, manage, and distribute your product data.
That hasn’t changed.
What’s changed is the environment that data operates in. More channels. more complexity. The introduction of AI that amplifies the quality of your data, good or bad.
Your foundation must be right, and this needs to be top-of-mind.
Clean, structured, and centralized product information enables digital shelf performance, elevates product experience, and drives agentic commerce readiness.
If you don’t bring your house in order now, you will be playing catch-up… and the gaps will be harder and more costly to close.
The window to get ahead of this is now.
Let’s talk about where your ACES & PIES management and product data operations stand – and what it takes to get them to the next level.
Speak with one of our experts.
