CARMEL, Ind. -

Arguably since its inception some two decades ago in Silicon Valley, OPENLANE has been “pushing the envelope” when it comes to wholesale car marketplace technology.

That continued in a big way Monday when parent company KAR Auction Services announced a “reimagined” version of the upstream vehicle auction platform designed to help OPENLANE’s 40-plus OEM and financial institution customers sell cars upstream much more efficiently.

The upgrades to OPENLANE, which facilities private-label upstream sales, incorporates a host of data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud technology from across KAR's business units.

“With more than 1 million vehicles sold upstream over the past 12 months, we are continuously pushing the envelope of OPENLANE’s technology,” KAR chief technology officer Peter Kelly said in a news release.

“Upstream selling is a critical part of our customers’ remarketing strategies. So, we have completely reimagined the upstream experience from our core technology to integrated data analytics to a more simplified, intuitive user interface,” said Kelly, who is also president of KAR’s digital services group and was one of OPENLANE’s founders.

“KAR’s investments and acquisitions position OPENLANE to support the needs of our customers today and tomorrow,” he said.

Data science & AI

For instance, a piece of the upgrades includes data science capabilities built by KAR’s DRIVIN business unit and artificial intelligence via TradeRev, also a part of the parent company.

KAR acquired DRIVIN in April 2017; it purchased a 50-percent stake in TradeRev in 2014, then acquired the remaining shares in fall of 2017.

DRIVIN provides predictive pricing recommendations to customers through analysis of millions of vehicles and thousands of dealers each day, and has algorithms designed to curate lists of ideal buyers for upstream sellers based on demand.

Meanwhile, TradeRev’s AI platform — launched in March and known as “H” — allows OPENLANE customers to generate condition reports images “in just seconds,” the company said.

In an optional piece to the OPENLANE offering, upstream sellers can choose to have cars that don’t end up selling upstream automatically move into the TradeRev digital auction marketplace.

“Ultimately, a successful upstream program is all about portfolio management – holistically optimizing outcomes and effectively mitigating risk,” said Kayne Grau, co-founder of DRIVIN and president of KAR’s Data as a Service group, in a news release.

“DRIVIN translates data into clear, actionable intelligence for dealers, and we’re excited to be working with OPENLANE customers to deploy these powerful insights,” he said. “Together, we’re creating a more informed, data-driven marketplace where both sides of the transaction can benefit.”

Grau is a speaker at next month's Automotive Intelligence Summit in Raleigh, N.C., where he and KAR chief economist Tom Kontos will discuss what the “big data pivot” from descriptive and diagnostic to prescriptive and predictive has meant for the auto remarketing industry.

'Broad flexibility'

The revamp of OPENLANE has been led by KAR chief information officer Tom Fisher, who has headed up a team of more than 300 IT professionals working in innovation hubs across North America over the past 18 months.

They have taken an “agile framework and hybrid cloud approach” blending advanced cloud tech with specialized in-house development. The resulting platform, KAR said, is “stable, scalable and flexible” and utilizes the “most progressive technology solutions available.”

In the news release, Fisher said: “As a team, we challenged ourselves to view OPENLANE through the eyes of our customers and advance the most sophisticated and advanced platform possible.

“We’ve successfully aggregated billions of data points across KAR’s diverse portfolio of companies while fortifying our technical foundation. This gives us the broad flexibility to deliver both out-of-the-box and bespoke solutions for our unique upstream customers.”