A maker of heavy duty parts such as drivetrain, sealing and thermal-management products for commercial, automotive, military and off-highway vehicles is upgrading to its B2B e-commerce site to help resellers become better buyers and sellers of its highly engineered products.

Dana Inc., a 114-year-old manufacturer based in Maumee, Ohio, offers more than 110,000 parts for commercial trucks, cars, off-road and marine vehicles in its online inventory. Now, it wants to take B2B buyers to school and better educate them on how to research and find aftermarket parts faster and generate sales.

Dana, which takes ecommerce orders and provides a dealer locator at DanaAfterMarket.com, has rolled out a training academy on Training.Dana.com as a companion website with tools, video and content aimed at helping parts buyers better understand the company’s products and the specific products they may be looking for. Training.Dana.com features interactive slideshows and videos and modules are composed of short chapters on Dana parts based on function, design composition and disassembly and installation basics.

Dan Griffin, senior director, aftermarket sales, Dana Inc.

“These are essential tools designed to assist aftermarket outlets in managing and growing their business,” says Dan Griffin, senior director, global aftermarket sales, marketing and customer service.  “They provide a better understanding of the functionality and servicing of those parts.”

Courses are followed by a brief quiz to aid in content retention and enhance the learning experience. A personalized certificate of completion is available for download and printing upon conclusion of a module, Griffin says.

“This online training tool provides technical information to help the commercial vehicle aftermarket community better educate its teams for improved overall service to end-user customers,” he says.

The first available training module walks customers and their mechanics and service specialist through how to properly identify Dana axle assemblies and provides an overview of and a breakdown on product alphabetic and numeric identification codes. Additional modules will be launched in the coming months for drive axle component identification and failure analysis, nomenclature, theory of operation, and failure analysis for drives shafts and steer axles.

The new online training tools also were launched with e-commerce upgrades for DanaAfterMarket.com. In early 2017, Dana overhauled its B2B site for new and replacement aftermarket parts and rolled out the updated site globally to satisfy demand from parts buyers who wanted faster and better ways to order online, Dana says. It has continued to upgrade the site since then.

The redesigned e-commerce site offers diagrams, videos and other information presented in ways designed to let users more quickly find such things as product specifications, pricing and available inventory. Other enhanced e-commerce features let buyers track order status and receive notifications about it; search by product popularity, relevancy and part number; place emergency orders; and access invoices and packing slips.

The newest upgrades allow users to access more product content, including through a media library to more quickly find brochures and sell sheets to assist with the buying and selling of Dana products. DanaAfterMarket.com is currently available for customers in North America and Europe, with orders fulfilled regionally through Dana distribution centers in Crossville, Tenn.; Lugoff, South Carolina; Robinson, Ill.; Györ, Hungary; Neu-Ulm, Germany; and Zaragoza, Spain.

Training.Dana.com runs on technology from Konvert Digital Solutions, which provides its digital commerce platform under a software-as-a-service model accessed via a web browser. Konvert charges monthly fees ranging from $250 for up to 49 system users to $1,750 for up to 1,499 users, and offers custom pricing for systems with 1,500 or more users, according pricing listed on its website.

Dana’s DanaAftermarket.com runs on technology from PhaseZero Ventures.

Dana, which reported $8.1 billion in total 2018 sales, manufactures original equipment for automotive manufacturers as well as aftermarket parts. Its brands include Dana axles, Spicer drivetrain products, Victor Reinz gaskets and sealing products, GWB industrial driveshafts, SVL universal joints and Thompson suspension components.

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