"Over the years it has consistently invested to hold true to its guiding principle. Dimo has always maintained up-to-date repair and service facilities from fully automated engine testing equipment to environment controlled paint booths," it said.

Dimo even has a state of the art automobile training school to train apprentices.

"From these major investments to 24-hour roadside assistance and 24-hour spare part delivery we have been relentless in their efforts in exceeding customer expectations," the company added.

"Providing an online interface for our vehicle owners was an obvious step for Dimo," the company's CEO Ranjith Pandithage said.

Explaining the situation of their customer needs, he added, "Most of our vehicle owners send their vehicles for service or repairs through their drivers. Although the owners are quite concerned about their vehicles, their busy schedules do not permit them the time to personally be available to monitor the progress. This is the overall rationale for this Internet investment. This facility will enable them to have access to the status of the service or repairs carried out on their vehicles without them having to spend much time".

Dimo Director Gahanath Pandithage explaining the functionalities of the system said: "Many of our customers own multiple vehicles. They can come online and register their vehicles as the first step. Thereafter every time they visit the site, they will find that the site is customized for them. At a glance they would be able to find out everything about the service and repair history of all their vehicles." He said that this information is invaluable especially for the corporate customers who manage fleets.

Not only can a customer book a service online, the system will now send him a SMS (Short Message Service) alert when the job is done. The customer will have the billing details too on the SMS and will be able to pay online as well, so that the driver can simply come and drive back the vehicle.

Web portal development specialist Affno's CEO Suren Kannangara said: "We have also built back-end manager tools to enable the Dimo staff to easily integrate with the Internet system."

"The key to our solution was to provide a cost effective and scalable system enabling Dimo to make full use of their existing back office systems and add functionalities and automation in stages," he added.