Compliance opens the door.
These features
own the shelf.
ACES and PIES compliance is the entry requirement. What happens above it is where the competitive separation begins. Auto Plus includes a suite of proprietary capabilities built around one objective: giving automotive aftermarket brands and distributors the tools to build catalog data that performs — not just data that qualifies.
The standard tells you what is required. It does not tell you what is possible.
Most catalog platforms are built around compliance. Get the file to pass validation. Get it accepted by the trading partner. Move on. The goal is to clear the bar — and clearing the bar is where the conversation ends.
Auto Plus is built around a different premise. Compliance is the starting point, not the destination. The proprietary features in Auto Plus exist to take brands from a catalog that qualifies to a catalog that competes — richer content, deeper product relationships, more complete data, better positioned for the commerce models that are already emerging.
These are not features we list on a slide. They are capabilities we demonstrate with your data. The demo exists for exactly that reason.
Content Enrichment at Scale
Tools for building full-depth PIES content systematically — every segment, every relevant field. And beyond the standard: proprietary descriptions, Markdown content regions, SEO metadata, category taxonomy, digital asset management, and more — a content layer the standard does not define and repositories cannot touch. Both the standard and the proprietary layer are built to scale — with human review and approval before anything posts. That is what produces catalog content that performs, not content that merely exists.
Product Relationships
Upsell, alternate, and related part connections built into the product record. Commerce intelligence that lives in the catalog and travels with the data.
Data Intelligence
Coverage analysis, quality scoring, gap identification — tools that surface what your catalog is missing and give you a path to fix it.
Ecommerce & Agentic Commerce Readiness
Agentic commerce runs on machine-readable, API-accessible catalog data. AI agents don't browse — they query. Auto Plus is purpose-built for this reality: a Web API that surfaces structured catalog data to any platform, and an MCP (Model Context Protocol) layer built on top of it. But the technology layer is only half the story. The brands, retailers, and distributors who have built their own content above the standard — enriched PIES, proprietary descriptions, Markdown content regions, SEO metadata, category taxonomy, digital asset management, and more — will win the sale. The standard gets you in the room. What you have built above it wins the order.
Four outcomes. One platform.
The proprietary capabilities in Auto Plus are organized around what brands, retailers, and distributors are actually trying to accomplish — not around what modules exist.
A Catalog That Tells the Full Story
Most brands have a catalog that identifies their parts. Auto Plus gives them the tools to build one that sells them. Enriched descriptions across every relevant code. Validated attributes built to the PAdb standard. Digital assets structured and referenced correctly. Pricing data that puts the brand in control of their commercial signal.
The gap between a catalog that qualifies and a catalog that performs is not technical. It is content. Auto Plus is built to close that gap at scale — systematically, across a full product line, with the consistency that every trading partner and every AI system requires.
Product Relationships That Drive Commerce
A part does not exist in isolation. It fits alongside other parts. It upgrades a previous version. It replaces a competitor's SKU. It ships with components the installer will also need.
Within the PIES standard, interchange and kitting manage cross-reference and component relationships — structured data published in the PIES file and delivered to every trading partner who receives it.
Beyond the standard, Auto Plus proprietary fields manage the relationships that should never appear in a public PIES export. Competitor references a brand manages internally but does not want published. ERP SKU mapping for bi-directional reads and writes. Upsell and alternate part connections. These live in the customer-hosted database, accessible via API, invisible to trading partners — commerce intelligence that powers internal operations without exposing competitive data to the supply chain.
Data You Can See and Manage
Catalog quality problems are invisible until they cause damage — a rejected file, a missing fitment, a wrong-part return. Auto Plus surfaces them before they reach that stage.
Coverage analysis that shows where fitment is incomplete. Quality indicators that flag content gaps at the record level. Reporting that gives catalog managers and data teams a clear picture of where the catalog stands and what needs attention — not after the trading partner rejects it, but before it leaves the building.
Workflow Built for How Catalogs Actually Work
Catalog management is not a one-time project. It is an ongoing operational reality — new part numbers, new model year coverage, trading partner updates, standard changes, data requests from receivers.
Auto Plus includes the workflow tools that make this manageable: scheduled export automation for ACES and PIES XML and flat files with compression, trading partner delivery, batch processing, user-level access controls, and the FTP and integration capabilities that connect the platform to the trading relationships that depend on it.
Import is intentionally not automated. Too many variables require a human being to analyze, decide, and act — source format inconsistencies, mapping decisions, validation results that need review before anything is committed. The export side runs on schedule. The import side runs on judgment. The catalog keeps moving. The platform keeps up.
The difference between a catalog and a commerce asset.
ACES and PIES done right is the foundation. Full fitment discovery, complete PIES depth across every segment, validated attributes, purposeful descriptions — this alone separates a brand from the minimum-compliance crowd. It is necessary. It is not sufficient.
The brands, retailers, and distributors who truly own their shelf space — digital or physical — are the ones who have built a content layer that exists beyond the standard entirely. Auto Plus carries proprietary content fields that live in the customer-hosted database and travel with the catalog: proprietary descriptions, Markdown content regions, SEO metadata, category taxonomy, digital asset management, and more — a content layer the standard does not define and repositories cannot touch.
This content is yours. It does not pass through a repository. It does not get normalized, degraded, or altered. It lives on your infrastructure, in your database, available through your API — and no trading partner receiving your standard ACES and PIES file has access to what you have built above it.
This is what breaks parity. Not more fields in the standard. A content layer the standard does not define — built by you, owned by you, performing for you. Both suppliers and receivers benefit. A supplier building proprietary content in Auto Plus owns a competitive asset no repository can touch. A receiver enriching their catalog on top of incoming brand data creates a product experience their competitors — receiving the same PIES feed — cannot match.
"The brands that win on the digital shelf stopped treating PIES as a destination and started treating it as a starting point."
Description Enrichment
Build purposeful, differentiated content across the full range of PIES description codes — systematically across a product line, with human review before posting. The tools handle the scale. Judgment handles the quality.
Attribute Validation & Completion
Identify missing, incorrect, or improperly applied attributes against the PAdb standard — and build to the correct valid values for each Part Type.
Digital Asset Management
Structured asset management that connects images, documents, and media to the correct product records — with the metadata and asset type references that trading partners and AI systems require.
SEO & Web Content
Structured web content, SEO metadata, and Markdown content regions that extend catalog data into ecommerce and web publishing contexts. Delivered via API to the receiver's web layer — keeping your content separate from and independent of their existing HTML and CSS.
Private Label & Brand Management
Manage private label product data alongside branded content — maintaining distinct catalog identities for different market relationships within a single platform.
From catalog to trading partner — reliably.
A catalog that stays inside the building is not working. Auto Plus includes the workflow and delivery capabilities that get validated, enriched data to the trading partners who need it — on schedule, in the right format, every time.
Any source. One destination.
Import catalog data from any format — ACES and PIES XML, proprietary flat files, legacy formats. Intelligent field mapping translates source data into the standard while flagging what does not have a valid equivalent. What maps, maps correctly. What does not is reported clearly, never fabricated.
Validated output for every trading partner.
Export ACES and PIES data in validated, standards-compliant XML ready for any receiver — major retailers, distributors, repositories, or direct submission. FTP automation delivers to trading partners on schedule without manual intervention. Your data leaves your system the way you built it.
The right people see the right data.
User-level access controls give administrators precise authority over what each team member can view, edit, and export. Catalog data, inventory data, pricing — each governed independently. The teams who need access have it. The data that should be protected stays protected.
Structured from the ground up.
Parts classification management ensures that every product in the catalog carries the correct PCdb Part Type ID — the foundation that determines which PIES attributes are valid, which ACES applications are possible, and how the product is categorized across every trading partner system that receives it.
Your catalog, queryable from anywhere.
Auto Plus includes HTTP-based Web API services that make your catalog data accessible to external applications, web properties, and integration layers — on your infrastructure, under your control.
For brands building ecommerce capabilities or internal tools, the API surfaces catalog data — fitment, product information, pricing, digital assets — to any platform that can make an HTTP request. No intermediary. No third-party data layer standing between your system and the applications that depend on it.
This is the foundation for agentic commerce readiness. As AI systems begin querying product catalogs directly — not through search engines but through structured data requests — the brands whose catalogs are API-accessible, richly structured, and living on their own infrastructure will be positioned to respond. The others will be waiting for a repository to expose a normalized version of their data to a system they do not control.
HTTP-Based Services
Standard REST-style services accessible by any developer on any platform. No proprietary SDK required.
On Your Infrastructure
The API runs on your deployment — your server, AWS, Azure, or RDP. No Rivers Edge in the data path between your catalog and the systems querying it.
Web & Ecommerce Integration
Connect catalog data to your website, ecommerce platform, or dealer portal. Fitment lookup, product detail, pricing — surfaced to the consumer-facing systems that need it.
MCP-Ready — Built for Agentic Commerce
Rivers Edge has built Model Context Protocol (MCP) support on top of the Auto Plus API layer — making catalog data directly queryable by AI agents and agentic commerce systems. The brands whose ACES and PIES data is structured, enriched, and MCP-accessible are the ones who will compete when agentic commerce becomes the standard channel. The infrastructure is ready. The question is whether your catalog data will be ready to run on it.
The full picture is in the demo.
Auto Plus has more capability than any page can convey — and more than we intend to list publicly. Bring your catalog, your challenges, and your questions. We will show you what it looks like when the tools match the problem.