Going from 100 to 500 associates in just five years is a sign of the significant growth at Kelley Blue Book.

With technology changing almost as if at the speed of light, KBB said one way it has pushed growth is through its partnership with a tech firm that offers the back-end analytics to augment the company’s reporting capabilities.

KBB turned to SAS to help support its business and reporting, including such tasks as delivering leads to dealers and determining vehicle values.

“Our enterprise analytics group expanded from one to 23 in just three years,” pointed out Shawn Hushman, KBB’s vice president of enterprise analytics.

“We’ve become an analytics-driven company by embedding SAS real-time analytics into our operations,” Hushman continued. “Our new processes provide unbiased insights to decision makers, making the reliance on conjecture a thing of the past.”

Officials outlined how the “analytics culture” spread at KBB.  The company built an analytics center of excellence, which has allowed KBB to layout measurable costs and benefits.

“We improved agility by placing the analytic center of excellence and business team members together,” Hushman explained. “As needs arise, analytic experts contribute ideas and answer questions. They also quickly bring in SAS predictive analytics and data mining to develop, deploy and evaluate analytic models.

“We have slashed our time to results and enhanced our analytic insight. We expect to identify additional business opportunities by analyzing unstructured content from social media and website interactions using SAS Text Miner from the SAS Text Analytics suite,” he continued.

KBB said it has brought in SAS forecasting, as well, to help it determine car values. These values are kept up to date by tracking hundreds of thousands of transactions, and they are also examined by region.

The Enterprise Analytics team also turns to SAS software for assistance in projecting ad inventory. This can help product managers determine the most ideal impression volume, in addition to supporting pricing strategies. SAS conducts site traffic and behavior pattern analysis, which sheds light on the most effective ad and page combinations for Kbb.com.

Kbb.com relies on SAS Analytics in sending out new-car prices, used values, classified ads, dealer locations, reviews and news to consumers.

Also, instead of just providing visitors with “new” and “used” routes to go on when navigating the site, Kbb.com offers “multiple intent-driven paths.”

“And since one change can affect ad traffic throughout the site, SAS forecasting simulation is critical in revealing how different attributes could affect revenues,” management stressed. 

Dan Ingle, KBB’s vice president of analytic insights technology, said, “We have literally changed the DNA of our company by moving from a traditional book publisher to an analytics powerhouse. Fact-based decisions have become our competitive strength. Whether or not to utilize analytics is no longer an option.

“SAS helps improve the consumer vehicle purchase process. Additionally, it provides leads and insights to dealers and OEMs to support their buying, selling and finance decisions,” Ingle continued. “SAS is our standard for predictive analytics. As we continually look for ways to drive revenue for the organization, SAS helps us identify how much to invest and where. SAS gives us the innovative muscle to support the aggressive goals of Kelley Blue Book.”

Also, Modern Analytics — which is a SAS Alliance member — offers supplementary implementation skills and predictive modeling tools, officials noted.