Arkona Inc., specializing in fully integrated dealer management solutions, on March 21 announced that Chapman Automotive Group, described as one of the top 50 multi-location dealerships in the world, has selected Arkona's Ensign Dealer Management Suite to fully

integrate and manage their newest dealership in Chandler, Ariz.

The newly constructed dealership is expected to be operational the first of May and Chapman plans to transition their remaining dealerships to the Arkona system as their present contracts expire, according to company officials.

Chapman is a family-owned business known for superior customer service. They have won numerous customer satisfaction awards over their 30 years in auto retailing. More than 40 percent of their business comes from repeat customers or through customer references.

Chapman will serve as a member of the Arkona Dealer Advisory Council that meets several times a year to help direct Arkona's product evolution.

"Arkona is a company that is on the forefront of technology," said Eddie Davault, COO of Chapman. "We need new technology to hold our costs and overhead in check and be competitive. Arkona gives us that advantage, plus their flexible technology allows them to respond to needed changes from us very quickly. During our

evaluation we mentioned specific features and screen displays that would be advantageous to our business and their engineering team had them implemented a couple of days later."

With Chapman's reputation for high quality customer service, it was very important for them to be able to mine their customer data quickly and easily, according to Buddy Rice, fixed operations manager at Chapman. Vehicle data linked to a customer is readily available for follow-up sales and service promotions from the sale forward. "With Arkona's solutions the data is always accessible and any data can be viewed on the screen with a couple of keystrokes," Rice said.

"The Ensign suite is absolutely a totally integrated package built on new technology -- not old technology that has been added to so many times that performance and functionality are affected," Rice said. "All the data in

the Arkona system is in one central database that can be accessed from any department. It is definitely state-of-the-art technology."

When the entire project is complete, Chapman plans to have as many as four IBM iSeries (AS/400) servers at different locations with as many as four stores accessing each system over the Internet. With the iSeries server in

the new Chandler store, Chapman will have the ability to host their own e-mail services and Internet connectivity. It will be possible for everyone in all of the dealerships to access email and the Internet on any PC at any

dealership, something that was not possible with their previous system.

Chapman also chose the Ensign Dealer Management Suite because of their expertise and upcoming innovations in mobile computing solutions for the automotive industry.

For more information on Arkona's Dealer Management Solutions, call 866-478-6364, or visit www.arkona.com.

About Arkona

Founded in 1996, Arkona is a public company which specializes in integrated information management and data distribution solutions for the automotive industry.

Arkona's Ensign Dealer Management Suite

fully integrates back office systems with a retail Web presence.

For more information visit the Arkona Web site at www.arkona.com.