Since 1994, CIECA has been working with the collision repair industry to provide open standards that enable systems to communicate with each other. Since then the use of EMS and now BMS has proliferated throughout the industry. And while the use of these standards have created tremendous value for all participants within the collision ecosystem there have been some downsides as more and more application providers have created and installed “data sweepers” or “data pumps” that indiscriminately extract data. Many repairers are unaware of the breadth of data being extracted or how that information may be used beyond its intended purpose.

For years now the Society of Collision Repairer Specialists (SCRS) has alerted its members about the potential risk to their customers and their DRP agreements which may require data security.  Until now, there has not been a way for repairers using one of the three information providers estimating systems to mitigate this risk. After recently sending a request to the three information providers, SCRS learned that CCC Intelligent Solutions has implemented a feature within the CCC ONE Estimating application that allows repairers to take more control over their EMS export.

CCC ONE users have always been able to configure multiple EMS paths that can be used for different systems. But now repairers can gain more control over their data by defining insurance company specific export paths that will allow them to export only EMS files for a specific insurance company’s estimate. For example, if a repairer is using a shop management system they could define one path to export all EMS files to (which is most likely already configured). And if the same shop was part of a direct repair program that required the use of a third party application when processing their claims, they could configure a second path just for that application.  In this example, only the data for that insurance company’s estimates would be exported. Once the new path is created, the third party application would also need to be configured to import EMS from that directory.

SCRS sees the CCC ONE solution as a big win for the industry by enabling repairers with the ability to control what data is shared with whom. We encourage all of our members to take the opportunity to inventory which applications are using the CCC ONE EMS files and make the necessary configuration changes. We applaud CCC for making this change and encourage all information providers to provide this same level of control within their applications.

See the information below from CCC on configuring the EMS path from within CCC ONE.

To configure CCC ONE EMS settings, from within CCC ONE select Configure > Machine Settings

1. From Machine Settings under Import/Export select File Export

2. Select EMS 2.01 as the export type, all insurance companies or a specific insurance company and the desired export directory.

3. Repeat this process on every computer where EMS is configured to export.

4. Check with your third party application providers to update the import settings to use the newly created directory.