Ben Flusberg, associate vice president of M LOGIC, says his company has been helping clients make smarter, real-time decisions for a long time.

“But now, M LOGIC combines efforts across Manheim to provide even better solutions that help our wholesale clients take action for faster transactions and greater profitability,” Flusberg said in a news release.

M LOGIC is a suite of decisioning products from Manheim that the company says puts Cox Automotive’s data to work for clients by “adding science to the art of profitable decision-making.”

Flusberg provided a specific example of a client company that he said is “achieving profit lift of tens of millions of dollars by using multiple M LOGIC products – Pricing Optimization and Location Optimization.”

The company notes that M LOGIC includes products in three verticals — valuation, optimization and personalization. Each of those verticals help Manheim’s clients make more informed, data-driven decisions. The “profit lift” potential is $150 to $300 per vehicle for clients that use the full suite optimization products, according to the company.

In the vertical area of valuation, the Manheim Market Report product for wholesale vehicle valuations uses millions of vehicle transactions, along with OEM build data, to value vehicles based on their specific mileage, condition, exterior color and region. MMR’s digital interface is available via desktop, tablet and mobile devices and receives more than 75 million valuation lookups per year from tens of thousands of users, the company stated.

Manheim says it is using M LOGIC’s suite of data sources and analytics capabilities to continuously refine MMR to improve its accuracy and help wholesale clients transact on the right car at the right price.

In the vertical area of optimization, Manheim says it is actually using artificial intelligence while other players talk about it. Manheim says its use of AI is “powered by vast amounts of its own data” along with data from other Cox Automotive brands.

Manheim notes that pricing optimization uses VIN-specific vehicle and market attributes to set accurate auction floor prices. The company adds that pricing optimization increases price retention and conversion, and that lifts client profits by $50 to $200 per vehicle.

The M LOGIC data that makes pricing optimization happen includes 10 million wholesale transactions, 30 million retail transactions, 48 million vehicle descriptions from manufacturer build data and information from 101 million individual vehicle options and packages, according to Manheim. Manheim expects to use AI to price more than 600,000 client vehicles across its digital and physical marketplaces this year. The number of vehicles priced has grown by more than 100 percent each year over the past few years. The use of pricing optimization to price this number of vehicles could achieve between $30 million and $120 million in client profit lift.

In the area of location optimization, Manheim notes that by optimizing the distribution of vehicles from grounding dealer sites, marshaling yards, and rental airport locations to physical auctions, M LOGIC’s Location Optimization increases client profit net of transportation- and depreciation-related costs.

It also balances wholesale inventory with local supply-demand, directing client cars to where the right buyers are. Manheim currently partners with several clients in the area of location optimization, and the company says it optimizes the distribution of about 200,000 client vehicles annually.

On average, location optimization helps clients gain an additional $50 in profit per vehicle, according to the company.

Recon optimization recommends VIN-specific vehicle repairs to approve and it increases clients’ price retention and improves their return on reconditioning spend. The company notes that typical profit lift for recon optimization clients is $50 to $100 per vehicle.

M LOGIC uses 32 million condition report line items across 5 million wholesale transactions to power this technology.

Throughout 2018, Manheim piloted recon optimization with several clients and optimized recon spend on nearly 30,000 vehicles across dozens of locations. The company notes that recon optimization will become available to additional clients within Manheim’s Seller Dashboard in late 2019.

In the area of personalization, and personalized vehicle recommendations, the product uses machine learning to match Manheim inventory to the right buyers. It helps dealers find and purchase the right vehicles more quickly and easily, the company stated, adding that to accomplish this, M LOGIC utilizes data from 10 million historical bid/buy transactions to identify dealer preferences around channel, location and vehicle attributes given current market conditions.

The recommendations engine uses approximately 200,000 vehicles listed within Manheim’s marketplace on any given day against these dealer preferences, generating 2.5 million ranked buyer-vehicle matches daily. Throughout 2019, dealers will automatically start seeing their personalized vehicle recommendations when they log on to Manheim.com.

In 2019 and beyond, M LOGIC will incorporate Forecast MMR, along with products that optimize client de-fleeting and pull-ahead decisions, into its suite of decisioning products. These products’ broad applications will take place within the traditional wholesale marketplace and across the newer mobility and vehicle subscription service spaces.