#1 Ranked Provider of Dealer Management Solutions – 2007*
Background
Recently selected as the Top Ranked Dealer Management
Solution (DMS) Provider for 2007, Arkona,
Inc.
is a leading supplier of fully-integrated business
management solutions targeted at the automotive
dealership industry. Arkona has enjoyed steady
growth since initial product shipment late in
1998 – now counting more than 130 employees
and around 850 (dealer) clients in all regions
of the United States representing all the major
car manufacturers including Acura, BMW, Chrysler,
Ford, Dodge, Buick, DaimlerChrysler, GM, Honda,
Hummer, Mazda, Subaru, Mitsubishi and many more.
Strong growth, a comprehensive integrated product
range and web-based delivery, encouraged the
recent acquisition of Arkona by DealerTrack Holdings,
Inc. (NASDAQ: TRAK) of Lake Success, N.Y. With
22,000 dealers, DealerTrack Holdings, Inc. is
a leading provider of on-demand software and
data solutions for the U.S. automotive retail
industry, projecting revenues and net income
growth of $230MM and $21MM respectively, this
financial year.
Arkona's web-based DMS provides automation of
all aspects of a car dealership including finance
and insurance, parts, service, accounting and
back-office functions, including payroll and
sales management, and integrates with third parties
like NADA and Kelley Blue Book. All this functionality
is available on-demand. The “Software as
a Service” (SaaS) basis of Arkona’s
applications means customers can implement quickly,
without expensive infrastructure upgrades, at
around 1/3 the price of competitors.
Challenge
Jim Jensen, Product Manager at Arkona explains, “Our
main problem was that the host applications were
perceived as outdated. Although the IBM System
i platform under the covers is state of the art,
many users still think it’s ‘old
technology’ because of the look of the
green screens. The younger generation of users
demand modern applications - they are very unsure
about how to navigate the 5250 interface.”
For several years, Arkona had been looking for
a modernization solution that could address the
look and feel issues quickly and easily, without
increasing the complexity of the continued enhancement
of their applications. They had evaluated many
alternatives without success until they found
looksoftware on the internet. “Our initial
interest was newlook’s support for modern
user interfaces, but we were very pleased to
see that there was strong support for application
integration and web services using soarchitect,” continued
Jensen.
He further observed, “Continued enhancement
is required to remain a market leader, so looksoftware’s
focus on reuse rather than redevelopment with
new languages means we can continue to use our
preferred RPG language.”
“Also important in our selection of looksoftware
was the ‘on-the-fly’ dynamic engine,
which generated most of the new UI automatically,
without sacrificing the quick response times
our customers had come to expect from 5250-based
applications,” concluded Jensen.
Solution
looksoftware’s partner program provided
a fast start, and the new browser-based GUI was
available for testing within 3 months. The web-based
smartclient deployment provides fast performance,
support for features like type-ahead that are
required by transaction-based applications, and
rich GUI support.
Centralized server-managed deployment provides
the easy, web-based access expected of leading
SaaS applications. “We are extremely
pleased with the ease of making changes and deploying
them in our already complex environment”, stated
Jensen. “Overall, we have been very
impressed with looksoftware’s
products, especially their ease-of-use, training
and support and, of course, the excellent outcome
of our modernization project.”
Arkona has taken advantage of scripts, macros,
to integrate directly with server based RPG
and Java programs and plan web services based
integration as the next modernization step.
Benefits
Arkona’s existing customers are very pleased
with how much easier it is to train their employees
using the browser-based interface, and their
sales team is excited to demo and sell the GUI
interface.
Since launching the modernized solution, the
sales team has even more reason to look forward
to demonstrating the DMS. According to Rich Holland,
President and CEO of Arkona, "We are
probably the fastest growing DMS provider, with
around
12 to 20 new dealerships welcomed into the Arkona
family every month.”
Regardless of the type of dealership, Holland
notes that dealers need to gain any technological
advantage they can to compete in today's highly
aggressive marketplace and a quality DMS suite
can help them stay ahead of the curve. Arkona’s
modernized DMS can now easily integrate with
any new application, technology, or device that
supports web services.
“One of our real strengths is our method
of deployment. We offer our tools via the Internet,
so the store does not have to make a substantial
investment of hardware or licensing of technology.
Our full DMS suite – with its inventory
management tools, F&I products, all integrated
with accounting solutions, wrapped with a CRM
alternative – provides a complete turnkey
solution to meet the information system needs
of any auto retailer, whether they are a franchised
or non-franchised dealer," Holland explains.
Arkona and looksoftware have put together a
sure-fire recipe for ongoing success!
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* Auto Dealer Monthly – April, 2007
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