Mercury Marine’s products epitomise the very best in marine performance. The product line is extensive. Consequently customers have a choice of up to 10 million different machine components to choose from when searching for a replacement part. With such a great number of parts, successful and usable cataloguing underpinned by a well thought through models datum and rigorous document management, are all integral to the success of the company’s aftermarket strategy.

Mercury’s UK sales company looked to Epitomy to replace their existing CD based catalogues with a web-based solution.  The scale of the parts database not only required an extensive degree of part data structuring but also suggested the need for a filter option that would not only filter machine parts data, but the supporting technical documents as well.

Epitomy met Mercury Marine’s requirements by devising a dynamic document management system with multiple filtering options. The system is capable of delivering searches on the desired topic, not just by the title of the document but also by the type of document. Additionally, the system can filter documents depending on the catalogue hierarchy.  It can deliver results at the very macro level, for example Mercury Marine, or down to a very specific micro level, for example, carburettors. Moreover, the user is able to look up not just all the machines allocated to a specific serial number and filter to all documents allocated to this number, but also, filter to the myriad of parts associated with that serial number.

The new web-based solution has obvious real-time benefits over the original CD-Rom version, for example, dealers and customers alike have instant, up-to-date access from the comfort of their desk to vital and accurate product information for all of Mercury Marine’s stock. The expert filtering options allows easy access to the many parts and machines on the system also increasing the accuracy of parts procurement and reducing costly order errors.  Dealers hold the latest parts and service information, giving them additional cross-sell and up-sell opportunities while also offering on-the-spot labour quotes giving a more precise assessment of total repair costs.  Meanwhile a faster, accurate and 24/7 aftermarket solution increases service levels to all customers while the sophisticated filtering system and Mercury Marine branded screen presence re-enforces Mercury’s brand values of quality, innovation and reliability.