We are often asked the question “Why I need a CIECA membership / license?”

To understand the reasoning behind this question, it is helpful to understand why CIECA was created.

• As technology first came into the Collision industry, every company was building proprietary software products and trying to integrate with their customers and trading partners. 
• Things quickly became very chaotic.  Everyone was doing essentially the same thing, but everyone was doing it differently.
• Given the complexity of a vehicle with various makes, models, trim packages, engine and transmission configurations, etc., building a means of communicating all this data to trading partners was a daunting task. 
• It quickly became apparent that we needed a common means of communicating… a common language that everyone in the industry could use to communicate electronically.

A group of forward-looking business leaders got together and proposed the creation of an organization that would develop and maintain this common language.  That was the creation of CIECA.  CIECA develops and maintains data communication standards for the industry.

They also realized that due to the ever-changing nature of the automotive industry, we could not rely on volunteers to maintain the data dictionary, code lists, implementation guides and other things that go into a standard.

The founding board elected to make CIECA a 501.c.6 non-profit, membership-based organization.  Any company that wanted to use the CIECA standards to communicate with their trading partners would need a license to do so and that license is granted in the form a CIECA membership.

Recognizing that big companies would get a lot more benefit and usage of the standards, it was agreed that companies’ membership fees would be based on the size of the company.  Annual revenue serves as a proxy for a company’s relative size.

Hundreds of companies from across all segments of the collision industry form the membership of CIECA.  CIECA Standards are the intellectual property of CIECA and are owned collectively by the membership.

A CIECA membership grants a non-transferable license to use CIECA standards to send or receive data from trading partners using integrations based on CIECA IP.  Continued use of CIECA standards requires a company to be a member in good standing with dues paid annually.