D. Dahle Mazda, a Mazda retailer in the Salt Lake City metro area, has selected Arkona's

Dealer Management Solution to manage its dealer operations. By agreement, D. Dahle Mazda has endorsed Arkona's solution as the dealership management system delivered in an ASP environment. Adding D. Dahle Mazda pushes Arkona's ASP user count past the 1000th connection barrier, according to the company.

Nationally, dealers are recognizing and endorsing Arkona's dealership management system that is delivered through an ASP

configuration, according to Arkona. Under Arkona's ASP model which was announced early last year, dealers connect by PC to the Arkona system hosted at a secure facility with the latest hardware and built-in redundancy

technology, which Arkona says guarantees access to the dealers' information 24 hours a day, 7

days a week.

According to Arkona, the benefit to the dealer is lower up front costs, the need for fewer technical personnel, and the elimination of costs relating to building and maintaining an information technology infrastructure.

"Our decision to move forward with Arkona was made after researching the major dealer management solutions available," said Rob Meyer, general manager of D. Dahle Mazda. "Arkona provides value to our dealership through reasonable upfront costs and monthly fees and a full-featured solution in an ASP setting. With its industry background and experience, plus its flexibility to meet our timeframes and provide excellent support, Arkona was a natural choice for us."

In January, Arkona and WorldCom entered into an agreement whereby WorldCom, a data and voice communications company, agreed to host and support Arkona's ASP clientele.

"Our partnerships with IBM, and now WorldCom, enable Arkona to provide its dealers with the best ASP solution on the market today," said Blake Nielson, vice president of client support. "We are quadrupling the capacity of our

ASP technology to stay ahead of the demand we are seeing for the product.

"D. Dahle Mazda was looking for an ASP-based dealer management solution that would give them an ongoing competitive advantage, and our solution does just that," concluded Nielson.

Colleen Farnsworth, controller of D. Dahle Mazda, agreed. "We believe Arkona's system can strengthen our dealership's competitive edge by

increasing employee productivity and improving customer relations. The Arkona solution allows us to seamlessly manage our operations and gives us a platform that can integrate to other third-party solutions and technologies," added Farnsworth.

According to the company, since signing the agreement with D. Dahle, Arkona has been increasing dealer connections to its ASP system at a rate of more than 100 connections a

month. Arkona still offers a non-ASP alternative to dealers who prefer local control or where high-speed Internet connections are not available in their areas. However, approximately 80 percent of new Arkona customers are selecting the ASP approach over the more traditional in-house turnkey system.

About Arkona Inc.

Founded in 1996, Arkona is a public automotive

management solutions company.

Arkona's Dealer Management Suite provides e-business solutions for automotive dealers that

fully integrate back office systems with a retail Web presence.

For more information visit www.arkona.com.