The Stamp of Success

Pitney Bowes' global financial group used SAS to shave three weeks off its credit and portfolio risk reporting process, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first year alone. With SAS, financial reporting that once took weeks to compile is now done in just hours, and the company is finding it easier to identify cross-selling opportunities.

For nearly 90 years, Pitney Bowes has been synonymous with postage meters. The company is a leading provider of mailstream technology, leasing nearly $3 billion worth of equipment and offering revolving credit lines to customers who prepay for their postage.

Prior to using SAS, the credit and portfolio management department had a difficult time tracking all of its customers. It didn't have the analytical capabilities to identify cross-sell candidates, and customer sign-up was delayed because of the time necessary to run a credit check on every customer. Disparate data systems housed around the globe couldn't talk to each other.

By using SAS, Pitney Bowes was able to keep its data stored on its legacy warehouse systems but now was able to see it all in one view. For instance, instead of running multiple credit checks on the same customers, Mahinda Yapa, Director of Credit and Portfolio Management, Global Financial Services, created a model with SAS that estimates creditworthiness based on several factors, including the type and size of business. "Now we don't have to ask for personal information like Social Security numbers, which delayed opening the account," he says.

Today, Yapa spends much less time tracking and reviewing the performance of his portfolios. Before, each regional unit provided its own report using manual Excel spreadsheets. "There were often major delays, and we spent half the meetings trying to get the financials to match," Yapa says. "Three staff members spent three weeks each month on the financials. With SAS, it takes those same staff members only four days.

"SAS allows us time to analyze the data," he adds. "We can offer cross-sell options based on the way customers are using our product. The information is seamlessly transmitted to the sales staff. They have it when they call up a customer's name. And we save at least $200,000 a year in the US alone because we aren't running credit checks for existing customers.''

Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved.