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IRVINE, Calif. — Kelley Blue Book believes its Vehicle Information Management System now is even more accurate because of a multimillion-dollar investment that came to fruition on Tuesday.

The company highlighted that dealers and other segments of the remarketing chain should benefit from this new system that has a massive increase in data collection, transparency into its processes, sophisticated forecasting models and formidable analytic capabilities.

Paul Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Kelley Blue Book, contends dealers, industry-connected businesses and consumers all look at the company's weekly values as the most trusted in the industry.

"We have eliminated the standard paradigm of inflexible systems that can only provide values based on historical vehicle sales," Johnson explained.

"The advanced statistical models we employ take into account current economic factors and catalytic events to project what values will be next week, next month and even further in the future," he continued.

"Events like Cash for Clunkers, major vehicle recalls and spikes in gas prices can't be predicted without some precedent, so we built an amazingly sophisticated system that records the market reaction to these events, successively improving our models in a ceaseless effort to help consumers and partners make better car-buying decisions," Johnson further elaborated.

Kelley Blue Book went on to highlight that the system's integrated valuation forecast feeds more than 15 products, including KARPOWER Online, the company's flagship valuation and inventory product. With the combination of VIMS, SAS statistical software and fast data warehouse architecture, KBB can help users to better assess risk, project profits and have the broadest understanding of the vehicle marketplace.

"The deployment of this new vehicle information management system has inherently changed the way we do business; it has changed our DNA," Johnson asserted.

"The company's 85-year history has earned us our pedigree, but the implementation of this new valuation system changes the future of our business," he added.

KBB pointed out that building and operating this new required a significant investment in staff and data. In the last few years, the company said it hired market analysts, statisticians, mathematicians, data management and technology experts with extensive industry experience, growing its analytic team almost threefold.

During the same period, Kelley Blue Book asserts that it took data acquisition to a new level, obtaining vehicle-related information from more than 250 sources. The company noted how it collects more than 100 data points for every vehicle.

Executives also maintain KBB is the only valuation company that manages vehicle values and data spanning the life of the vehicle within a single database — from new, used and residual values. They indicated their transaction database houses 256 million observations, which includes more than 1.5 million vehicles that were physically inspected at auctions across the country by KBB's national field force.

"Kelley Blue Book's new analytic capabilities provide dealers, banks, finance and insurance companies with unrivaled insights into the future of the automotive marketplace, continuing the company's preeminence in vehicle pricing and values," Johnson declared.

"With these game-changing enhancements in data collection, advanced statistical modeling and personnel, businesses can manage an entire portfolio of inventory more effectively and profitably than ever before," he concluded.