Capitalize on competence

SAS helps organizations leverage the advantages of business intelligence

LISBON, PORTUGAL   (June 22, 2005)  –  At SAS Forum International 2005 today, SAS, the leader in business intelligence, announced its plans to help organizations worldwide to implement a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC).

Business Intelligence is reaching more and more constituents inside and outside of organizations. Information demands, data volumes and audience populations are growing and continue to grow exponentially. As the demand increases, so does the imperative for a sound Enterprise Intelligence strategy to meet today’s short term needs and to provide the foundation to meet a longer term vision.

In order to overcome common issues, more and more organizations are turning to SAS to help them to develop a BICC. This holistic approach to business intelligence encompasses more than just the technology; it is a part of the overall information strategy. A Business Intelligence Competency Center is a permanent formal organizational structure that includes representatives from the business and IT, to advance and promote the effective use of business intelligence to support the organization’s business strategy.

“If you ask organizations what they want to use BI for, better decision-making is the top answer,” said Frank Buytendijk, Research Vice President at Gartner. “But most organizations are not making better decisions now than they did five years ago. The pressure from cost cutting and compliance has put a greater focus on BI, but businesses are still using it very tactically. Organizations that are successful with BI often have in common that they have an open information culture and have started a BI competency center.”

An organization with a BICC will see the following benefits:

• Increased business user satisfaction
• Increased usage of business intelligence
• Better understanding of the value of business intelligence
• Increased decision-making speed
• Decreased staff costs
• Decreased software costs

“For almost three decades, SAS has been helping organizations drive business strategies that evolve information from operational knowledge to create intelligence for innovative decision making,” said Gloria Miller, vice president, professional services, SAS. “Within our customer engagements we have amassed a great deal of information on the issues organizations face with information delivery and how they solve those issues across their organizations.”

There are different functional areas that can form part of a Competency Center and SAS can help identify which areas make the best sense and help organizations to put them into action. SAS customers presenting at SAS Forum International that have already set up Competency Centers include Nedbank Retail (South Africa), KBC Bank & Insurance Group (Belgium), KLM (Netherlands), CSI Piemonte (Italy), Research Institute of Russian Railways (Russia).

“Business users in KBC have a huge appetite for information. We have made a significant investment in Business Intelligence technologies and want business users to take full advantage of this. The Competency Center provides a single point of contact to the BI expertise and knowledge in our organization. This enables us to efficiently support the needs of business users and transfer the skills they need to get the intelligence they need to drive the business forward,” said Yves Roelandt, Department head CCBI, KBC Bank & Insurance Group (Belgium).

About SAS Forum International

SAS Forum International is the premier international event for enterprise intelligence. It features more than 200 presentations from 140 organizations representing 40 countries and spanning nine industries. Senior-level executives from Allianz Portugal, Direct Group Bertelsmann (UK), Citicards (US), Nedbank (South Africa), Octopus Cards (China/Hong Kong), and Time Inc. (US) are among the presenters.

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