Day and The Cobalt Group Sign Reseller Agreement to Provide End to End Solution for the Automotive Industry
IRVINE, Calif. & SEATTLE--Sept. 2, 2003--| Strategic Alliance to Offer Total Solution for Automobile Dealers and Manufacturers |
Day Software (SWX:DAYN), a leading provider of content management software, and The Cobalt Group, the automotive e-business leader, today announced a new strategic alliance and have signed a value added reseller agreement to deliver e-business solutions that integrate manufacturer and dealer marketing content based on Day Communique, the company's flagship content, portal and digital asset management platform and Cobalt Nitra automotive eRetail applications.
As part of the newly signed reseller agreement, Cobalt is the preferred supplier of Day products to the North American automotive marketplace. The two companies already serve several of the world's leading automotive manufacturers like Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler. They will work together to build on their success in delivering cost effective Web applications for automobile manufacturers (OEMs) and dealerships.
"Day's unique connector technology and Cobalt Nitra will work seamlessly together to more rapidly deploy OEM content across dealer-run, consumer facing Internet applications," said John Holt, president and CEO of The Cobalt Group. "Together Day and Cobalt will help strengthen brand control for manufacturers, and provide dealers with easy-to-use tools for faster, better and more complete access to high quality, manufacturer provided content."
"The combination of Day Communique's flexible, leading-edge content management capabilities with The Cobalt Group's extensive services experience and leadership in the automotive industry will lead to a new generation of innovative e-business solutions for dealers and automobile manufacturers," said Michael Moppert, chairman and CEO of Day Software. "With its broad dealer network added to the synergy of our companies' products, we are delighted to add Cobalt to our network of Value Added Applications for our key Vertical Markets."
Day Communique is an integrated content management, portal management and digital asset management framework that manages and unifies digital business information, applications, and processes through the Web. Communique's content-centric approach and its innovative ContentBus(TM) Architecture transform entire global organizations into virtual enterprises, bringing together content from any system, regardless of location, language or platform. This approach enables enterprises to access structured and unstructured content from multiple back-end data sources, eliminating the need and cost for a separate repository and allowing consistent control over all content and interactions across an enterprise. Since both Communique and Nitra are built as native J2EE applications, they can be implemented at substantially reduced cost, time and risk.
Cobalt's Nitra is the leading e-business platform for automotive retail, with more than 3,500 dealerships and 15 OEM retail networks using the system on a daily basis. Nitra provides flexible online content management and control for OEMs and dealers groups. Features include user-friendly content management and design tools that enable dealerships to update pictures, color and layout in real time, using Nitra's simple interface. Dealerships can also quickly access manufacturer and dealer group marketing content as well as manage and share dealer text and images.
Cobalt will focus on offering Day Communique and Nitra to automotive manufacturers and large dealer groups as a marketing content and brand site solution fully integrated with retail networks. Users within the large enterprise can leverage Communique's easy-to-use content management tools and ensure that corporate brand content is consistently maintained and updated across individual dealer sites. Dealers can utilize their Cobalt Nitra tools to manage their dealership Internet marketing efforts and select from approved corporate content to display on their Web sites.
About Day (www.day.com)
Day is a leading provider of integrated content, portal and digital asset management software. Day's technology Communique offers a comprehensive, rapidly deployable framework to unify and manage all digital business data, systems, applications and processes through the Web. Communique content-centric architecture, and its innovative ContentBus, turns the entire business into a virtual repository, bringing together content from any system, regardless of location, language or platform.
Day is an international company, founded in 1993, and listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange New Market (SWX:DAYN) since April 2000. Day's customers are some of the largest global corporations and include Audi, Escada, General Electric, Hugo Boss, Intercontinental Hotels Group, McDonald's, UBS and Volkswagen.
About The Cobalt Group
The Cobalt Group (www.cobaltgroup.com) works exclusively in the automotive retail market developing integrated e-business programs that help manufacturers and dealers increase their profits and operational efficiencies. Cobalt offers a broad range of products and services, including enterprise software; customer relationship management (CRM) applications; e-commerce applications; the industry's largest OEM parts locating and marketing service; and e-business best practices training and consultation. Cobalt's network includes 12,000 franchised dealers and more than 72 of the 100 largest dealer groups. Cobalt is the only software technology provider ever endorsed by 18 manufacturers and the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA).