The Cobalt Group Joins Automotive IT Standards Body

MCLEAN, Va., April 16 -- The Cobalt Group, the leading provider of e-business software and services to the automotive retail market, has joined STAR, the IT standards body for the North American retail automotive industry.

STAR (Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail) is a non-profit, auto industry-wide initiative to create voluntary IT standards for the data elements and transmission format used by manufacturers, dealers, and retail system providers to communicate with each other. STAR's initiatives will result in a more efficient data exchange between dealers and manufacturers, with lower costs, more accurate and timely data, and increased levels of customer satisfaction.

"The STAR effort is a natural fit for Cobalt," said John Holt, president and CEO of The Cobalt Group. "Our inventory, CRM and fixed operations applications will benefit from broad adoption and implementation of STAR standards and we believe that ultimately these standards will reduce dealer costs and allow them to select the best of breed applications. We already have efforts underway to implement existing standards like Sales Lead 2.0."

"It's great to see that The Cobalt Group has plans to implement STAR standards. Hopefully, their efforts can help drive more adoption of STAR standards for the rest of the automotive industry," says Tom Campisi, STAR communications chair.

  About STAR (www.starstandard.org )
  Source: STAR

The Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR) organization is the Information Technology (IT) standards organization for the retail automotive industry. The goal of the STAR organization is to use IT standards as a catalyst in fulfilling the business information needs of dealers and manufacturers while reducing the time and effort previously required to support this activity.

Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, STAR is a not-for-profit volunteer organization and its members include Dealers, Manufacturers and Retail System Providers (RSPs). As members, they are interested in developing, promoting, and administering voluntary IT standards in the retail automotive industry and improving the effectiveness, timeliness and competitiveness of the IT solutions needed within the retail automotive industry.

  STAR membership roster:
  Dealer Groups: NADA

Retail System Providers: ADP, AFSA, Arkona, Auto/Mate Inc., DealerTrack, EDS Automotive Retail Group, PBS Financial Systems Inc., Procede Software, Reynolds & Reynolds, RouteOne, Sun Microsystems, The Cobalt Group, Tibco, UCS

Manufacturers: American Honda Motor Co., Inc., American Isuzu Motors, Inc., American Suzuki Motor Corp., BMW of North America, Inc., DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corp., Hyundai Motor Company, Jaguar Cars, Kia Motors America, Mazda North American Operations, Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America, Inc., Nissan North America, Inc., Porsche Cars North America, Inc., Renault SA, Saab Cars USA, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Volkswagen of America, Volvo Cars of North America

  About The Cobalt Group (www.cobaltgroup.com )
  Source: The Cobalt Group

The Cobalt Group works exclusively in the automotive retail market to help manufacturers and dealers develop integrated e-business programs by leveraging its industry leading technology, broad range of services and deep domain knowledge. As the automotive e-business leader, Cobalt is uniquely positioned to help its customers maximize their overall operating efficiencies and profits.

Cobalt offers a broad range of products and services developed specifically for the automotive marketplace including enterprise software for manufacturers and dealers; customer relationship management (CRM) software applications; online automotive commerce applications; the industry's largest OEM parts locating and marketing service; and dealership e-business best practices training, consulting, and process compliance analysis.

Cobalt operates a dealer network larger than any other technology provider in the automotive retail industry including 12,000 franchised dealers and more than 70 of the 100 largest dealer groups. Cobalt is the only software technology provider ever endorsed by 17 manufacturers and the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA).

With headquarters in Seattle, Wash., Cobalt has offices in several major cities, and a field sales and services force in 30 states, including all major U.S. metropolitan sales areas (MSAs).

For more information, please visit www.cobaltgroup.com or call 800-909-8244.