For many OEMs, competitive advantage has traditionally come from product quality, engineering excellence and brand reputation.
But in the aftermarket, the rules are changing. Customers are no longer comparing just products. They are comparing experience:
How quickly they can identify a part.
How easily they can place an order.
How fast they can get equipment back up and running.
In this environment, speed to service is becoming one of the most important drivers of aftermarket performance.
And for many OEMs, it is also where the biggest gaps exist.
Aftersales has become a critical revenue stream for manufacturers. Parts and service generate recurring income, often with higher margins than new equipment.
In fact, parts sales now account for around 30% of OEM revenue on average, making aftermarket performance a significant driver of overall business results.
But the value of that revenue depends on how quickly it can be captured. When equipment is down, customers are not thinking about brand loyalty. They are thinking about speed.
How quickly they can:
If the OEM cannot support that process efficiently, customers will look for alternatives.
This is already visible across the market.
Only 35% of OEMs believe customers purchase most of their parts directly from them, meaning a significant share of aftermarket revenue is going elsewhere. In many cases, the deciding factor is not price. It is convenience, availability, and speed.
Speed to service is rarely limited by a single issue. It is usually the result of multiple small delays across the aftermarket process.
Common bottlenecks include:
One of the biggest constraints is catalogs production. Research shows that 59% of OEMs say it takes a month or more to produce a parts catalog, making it difficult to keep information current.
When parts information is outdated or hard to navigate,
Customers cannot move quickly -> Service teams step in to help -> Engineering teams are pulled into support -> And the entire process slows down.
These delays are rarely visible in isolation. But together, they significantly impact how quickly a customer can complete a repair.
Speed is not just an operational metric. It has a direct impact on revenue. When customers cannot quickly identify and order parts, two things happen.
First, errors increase.
Research shows that 71% of OEMs experience at least one incorrect parts order in every 50 orders, often due to identification challenges.
Each error creates additional delays and costs.
Second, customers look elsewhere.
If a third-party supplier can provide a faster, simpler ordering experience, the customer will often choose that option, even if the OEM part is preferred. This is where revenue leakage occurs:
The demand for parts still exists, but the OEM is no longer capturing it.
High-performing OEMs are not necessarily adding more resources. They are removing friction from the service journey. Speed to service improves when customers can move through the process without interruption. This typically involves:
In these environments, customers do not need to wait for confirmation. They can identify the correct part themselves and place an order immediately. Service teams are no longer a bottleneck. Engineering teams are not required for routine queries. The entire aftermarket process becomes faster and more scalable.
Improving speed-to-service is not about working faster within existing processes. It is about changing how those processes are structured. Most OEMs already have the data required to support faster service. It exists in CAD models, BOM structures and engineering systems. The challenge is that this data is not structured for aftermarket use.
This creates delays in:
Modern OEMs are addressing this by transforming engineering data into a parts ecosystem.
Instead of manually rebuilding parts catalogs, engineering data flows directly into interactive environments where users can:
By enabling interactive 3D parts catalogs, Partful allows OEMs to remove friction from the service journey. Parts identification becomes self-service. Publishing becomes faster. Support workload decreases. And most importantly, customers can move from problem to solution much more quickly.
In today’s aftermarket, competitive advantage is not just about having the right part. It is about how quickly the customer can find it. Because you can’t buy what you can’t find.