ARKONA Announces Customized Reporting Features with Complete Support for Crystal Reports
SALT LAKE CITY--April 17, 2001--ARKONA(R) Inc. (OTC:ARKN), a technological leader in fully integrated dealer management solutions, Tuesday announced new enhanced reporting features through the complete integration and support of Crystal Reports(TM) by Crystal Decisions(R) to the Ensign Dealer Management Suite.
This new functionality is a significant enhancement to the reporting capabilities currently available within the Ensign Suite and extends the applications' hallmark benefit of complete flexibility and adaptability to user requirements.
Integrating Crystal Reports with the dealer management suite gives ARKONA customers the ability to get customized reports quicker and easier either by requesting custom reports through ARKONA professional services or developing the reports themselves.
The powerful, easy-to-use, click-and-drag graphical user interface allows clients to create their own customized reports with little or no technical training.
"Using Crystal Reports helps us to be extremely responsive to our customers' requests," said Richard Holland, president, ARKONA. "Each of our customers is unique in how they manage their business, and we now have increased our ability to quickly provide them with customized information."
"We know firsthand what a significant advantage this functionality can deliver," said John Haupt, general manager, Tri-County Ford-Mercury Inc.
"We needed some modifications to one of the Ensign reports, so we called ARKONA. They were able to develop the customized report and deliver it to us in a few hours. The report was in a format that my accounting department could easily understand (Microsoft Excel(TM)), and it saved me hours of work and hassle."
Crystal Reports is a leader in high-performance, customized reporting that enables interactive information analysis. The software is designed for integration within existing applications.
The powerful combination of the Ensign Dealer Management Suite and Crystal Reports ensures that the dealership's data can be accessed, analyzed and reported on in a variety of formats. The technology is a natural fit for ARKONA's relational database structure where information is always present and accessible.
"Crystal Reports is an industry standard in delivering rich content from virtually any data source and publishing it to the Web or your PC in a variety of formats," said Tony Wind, vice president of product development at Crystal Decisions.
"We are pleased to provide flexible custom reporting capabilities to the auto dealership arena in conjunction with ARKONA's dealer management solutions."
As part of this solution, ARKONA has developed a suite of standard reports using Crystal Reports that will be distributed to the customer base. Customers will have a head start in applying this new capability by either using the reports distributed by ARKONA or modifying the standard reports for their own use.
Pricing and Availability
This new ARKONA solution is available now. Pricing for reports created by ARKONA are based on the nature and the scope of the request. The price of Crystal Reports and ARKONA's Data Dictionaries is $900.
For more information on both products and for more information on the Ensign Dealer Management Suite contact an ARKONA representative in your area by calling 866/478-6364 or 801/501-7100. To find out more about ARKONA products and services go to www.arkona.com.
About ARKONA
Founded in 1996, ARKONA is a public company and a leader in integrated information management and data distribution solutions for the automotive industry.
ARKONA's Ensign Dealer Management Suite leads the market in technologically superior e-business solutions for automotive dealers that fully integrate back office systems with a retail Web presence.
In this market ARKONA is one of the first premier Application Service Providers (ASP). For more information visit the ARKONA Web site at www.arkona.com.
This release may contain forward-looking statements as well as historical information.
Forward-looking statements, which are included in accordance with the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, may involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the company's actual results and performance in future periods to be materially different from any future results or performance suggested by the forward-looking statements in this release.
Such factors include the risks that technical difficulties may be encountered in connection with the integration of the Ensign Dealer Management Suite and Crystal Reports and the customers will not experience the heightened functionality described herein.
Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release. The company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements found herein to reflect any changes in company expectations or results or any change in events.
ARKONA is a registered trademark. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.