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Letter to the Editor

ADP Dealer Services Announces Installation of ASP Solution in 71 Sonic Automotive Locations

CHICAGO -- The Dealer Services Group of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. has announced the completion of the installation of their ASP solution in 71 Sonic Automotive, Inc. dealer locations. ADP's ASP provides delivery of sales, service, parts and business applications and Internet access to dealers across a secure network hosted in a professionally managed environment.

Sonic has locations throughout the country connected together by their own private frame relay network, SonicNet, which give their ADP stores direct access to the ADP data center in Chicago. Because ASP is an offsite solution, it can be tailored to provide as much or as little information access and system management as the dealer needs. Therefore it can be scaled to handle a single location or several stores regardless of data volume.

Instead of locating the system within the dealerships, ADP's ASP solution is "offsite" with the server and software located in a secure data center with 24/7 support. ASP provides each dealership location with a managed server strategy that connects manufacturers, systems, and dealers. These systems are protected by a world-class facility having fully redundant onsite power, temperature control and disaster recovery systems.

"There are several benefits we will derive from the move to ADP's ASP solution. First, we can leverage the resources of ADP for redundancy, security, and improved support. ADP maintains all systems, data, updates, and backups within its ASP solution. ASP solutions and outsourcing are the cornerstone of our Information Strategy Plan. We have now completed networking all of our dealerships nationwide on SonicNet, our wide area network, and the migration of all stores off their local servers to the servers in the ASP model. This supports our initiative for standardization of technology in our dealerships. This means we can deliver the best of breed in technology to our dealerships - large and small - with the higher quality than previously found at a typical dealership," states David Boatman, Chief Information Officer of Sonic Automotive.

"ADP's ASP model will allow us to leverage the economies of scale as we continue our growth through acquisition, and ultimately we will realize cost savings from the corporate home office to the dealership. In the future we will gain even more efficiencies by consolidating information on finance and operations into a single data warehouse to support operations, eCommerce, and financial activities. This future is most probable with the use of ASP," adds Boatman.

Sonic Automotive, Inc. is the second largest automotive retailer in the United States, operating 165 dealership franchises and 30 collision repair centers nationwide.

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