Sprint is 40th Member to Join STAR
MCLEAN, Va., Jan. 29, 2004 -- STAR, the IT standards body for the retail automotive industry, has announced that Sprint has joined its membership beginning in 2004. STAR membership has jumped 25% in 2003.
Sprint, headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, provides customized, integrated solutions and a complete voice, data, wireless and collaborative communications portfolio that helps manufacturers more efficiently manage and execute their strategic Supply Chain Management (SCM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) processes, and enhance utilization of Plant Floor Technologies and Warehouse Management Systems.
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.
"Sprint joined the STAR organization to stay abreast of key technologies supporting the automotive industry and nationwide automotive dealerships while further enhancing our Sprint Dealer Solutions(SM) platform which supports STAR's Dealership Infrastructure Guidelines (DIG)," says Lee Priest, Sprint Manufacturing Segment Director. "Sprint wants to ensure future products and solutions are created to accommodate the needs of manufacturers and dealerships."
Sprint is aggressively responding to manufacturing industry challenges today with its broad range of telecommunication solutions and is working together with its strategic alliance partners to bring new solutions to market quickly. Sprint has been acknowledged for its efforts in the manufacturing industry and vertical markets overall with the 2002 Frost & Sullivan Market Engineering Leadership Award for the Manufacturing Vertical and the 2004 Frost & Sullivan Telecom Services Vertical Company of the Year Award.
"This is really encouraging to see Sprint so interested and involved with STAR's infrastructure standardization efforts. We see this commitment helping to reduce IT cost and complexity for dealers," 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, Advent Resources Inc., AIAG, AFSA, Arkona, Auto/Mate Inc., DealerTrack, EDS Automotive Retail Group, Motorcycle Industry Council, NAT, Inc., NeoSynergy, LLC, PBS Financial Systems Inc., OAGI, Procede Software, Reynolds & Reynolds, RouteOne, Sprint, Sun Microsystems, The Cobalt Group, Tibco, UCS, 5Square Systems Corporation
Manufacturers: American Honda Motor Co., Inc., American Suzuki Motor Corp., BMW of North America, Inc., DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corp., 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, Subaru, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Volkswagen of America, Volvo Cars of North America
About Sprint Source: Sprint
Sprint is a global integrated communications provider serving more than 26 million customers in over 100 countries. With approximately 68,000 employees worldwide and nearly $27 billion in annual revenues, Sprint is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying state-of-the-art network technologies, including the United States' first nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network and an award-winning Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint provides local communications services in 39 states and the District of Columbia and operates the largest 100-percent digital, nationwide PCS wireless network in the United States. For more information, visit www.sprint.com .