Think Big, Start Focused

Industry-specific solution suites, tailored to your specific needs by Matthew Barnason

To say that banks, insurance companies and telecommunications providers are about to enter a new stage of evolution might sound like hyperbole, but David Hartley, director of industry intelligence solutions for SAS International, believes that this is exactly what is happening, right now. The opportunities afforded by a successful intelligence strategy have never been greater. Indeed, the need for one hasn't, either.

"Many companies are still unable to generate the required intelligence to support corporate decision making, or they can't generate it fast enough to act upon opportunities. This means that they face huge risks at every turn from costly mistakes. The innovative companies are the ones recreating themselves. They are becoming intelligent enterprises," says Hartley.

SAS' vision of an "intelligent enterprise" is one that no longer has isolated silos of disparate data. Rather, its decision makers have complete and current intelligence that is readily available and covers every aspect of its customers, its suppliers and itself. The intelligent enterprise is the sort of company that is capable of thinking as one brilliant individual, swiftly adapting to its market environment, competitively and profitably.

With the experience of solving business problems for more than a quarter-century, SAS has accumulated an enormous knowledge base about the major industries. With this, SAS has created very detailed virtual maps and models of what a bank, an insurance company or a telecom looks like from the inside out. From these maps and models, SAS developed suites of industry-specific solutions. After all, how can you get a clear picture of the outside until you have a clear picture of the inside?

Hartley explains: "Each suite of solutions incorporates industry-specific models and an industry-specific architecture to address the business pains felt across these industries. The SAS team responsible for developing these solutions has used existing SAS projects to help define what the ideal output should be – whether they be analytical models, suites of reports or activity-based costing models – and then worked backwards from there to ensure a fully integrated architecture. And because implementing any revolutionary strategy cannot be done in a day, a week or a month, each industry suite is modularized to ensure that companies can adopt a 'think big, start focused' approach, while building toward the vision of a truly intelligent enterprise."

Investing in intelligence, with confidence
"To make a significant investment in information technology today, a CIO needs to have complete confidence that the provider can help his organization tackle more than just one or two well-defined business issues," says Hartley, "That provider has to understand the customer and the industry in which it operates."

And Hartley should know. He spent more than 10 years leading business teams in two of the largest financial institutions in the UK and became frustrated at IT vendors' provision of so-called solutions that were no more than pure technology. From these experiences, Hartley has come to hate "black boxes" – he has purchased a few of them before and he claims that "the answer is always 42, regardless of what the question is.

"So the launch of our industry intelligence solutions really struck a chord with many of our customers as they bring together our award-winning technology with our worldwide experience of how to tackle a range of key business issues within a particular industry. But these are really just key starting points for an organization to go on and implement a fully operational solution. For example, the SAS Credit Scoring for Banking solution includes a number of predefined scorecards to address application scoring for mortgages, credit cards and loans that have been pre-built based on repeated successful project experiences from around the world.

So in effect, we have automated the production of the first cut scorecards for each of these areas. And because our technology is open, we can then work with our customers to test, check and recalibrate, ensuring that the scorecards work for the customer's unique market needs.

"Take the example of SAS Customer Retention for Telecommunications," explains Hartley. "In itself it is really only part of a grander solution – it enables telecoms to quickly build propensity models that predict the likelihood of a customer churning, but then what do you do? Well, also in this integrated architecture is our SAS Marketing Automation for Telecommunications, meaning that we can then use this solution to manage proactive marketing communications to those customers who are contemplating finding another provider.

"But we haven't stopped there. We are currently building an additional module for mobile telephone operators that addresses their customer profitability from an activity-based costing perspective. So now, by using the SAS Telecommunications Intelligence Solutions, a telecom can accurately predict who among their customers is likely to churn, and which ones among them are profitable – and therefore worth retaining – by managing targeted communications with them, all from the same integrated and extendable architecture," says Hartley.

"Similarly, we have created SAS Claims Prediction for Insurance, which can be coordinated with SAS Marketing Automation for communicating with the most profitable, least risky insurance customers, while SAS Strategic Performance Management allows them to monitor the key performance indicators relevant to their industry and markets," concludes Hartley.

SAS' integrated architecture
Due to SAS' integrated architecture, these industry solutions fully support the SAS Intelligence Value Chain from the planning step, all the way to analytical intelligence. (For a full explanation, see the article "Following the Value Chain")

SAS' Industry Intelligence Solutions enable enterprise business intelligence, across the entire pyramid (customer, supplier and organizational intelligence segments). It is only after an organization can generate valuable intelligence in each of these three segments that it can begin to coordinate all of them and operate the business as an intelligent, integrated entity.

What Will it be Like When Every Company Gets There?
It's not just about companies running like well-engineered machines on the inside. When data flows intelligently within every company, each organization will become a swift, responsive entity that is capable of tailoring its offerings immediately to rapid changes in the market.

The ramifications of this will affect each and every one of us as business leaders, employees and as customers ourselves. It means no more responding to retail credit offerings, only to be turned down. It means streamlined competition, super-efficient supply chains, better service and better prices. It means that every company and its customers will be brought closer together.

Equally importantly, it also will mean that those companies that are not currently building an effective intelligent strategy will be the first to fall to their more visionary competitors. Where will your company be two years from today?