In the world of retail, it’s no secret that the key to success is the ability to offer the right product to the right customer at the right price and at the right time. Until now few retailers have been able to consistently achieve this rarefied combination.

SAS meets this challenge with the introduction of SAS® Revenue Optimization, the only truly integrated revenue optimization product that helps retailers manage revenue and margin through the entire merchandise life cycle. This suite of integrated software solutions includes:

• SAS Regular Price Optimization - helps retailers establish and maintain optimal everyday prices based on costs, regional demand patterns and competitive price information.
• SAS Promotion Optimization - lets retailers maximize margin and revenue by determining which items or groups of items to promote, in which locations, at what price points and via which promotional vehicles.
• SAS Markdown Optimization - provides retailers with a new approach for effectively managing markdowns and improving profitability.

"The ability to make optimal pricing and promotion decisions in the pre-season planning process and continue to adjust and optimize in-season is a significant step in improving retail profitability," says Lori Schafer, president of Marketmax, a division of SAS. "SAS allows retailers to continually analyze the data, leveraging forecasting and optimization technologies, and provides the retailer with profit opportunities not available before."

SAS Revenue Optimization helps retailers maximize revenue and margins by precisely setting and managing regular prices, planning optimal promotions and executing the most successful markdown strategies, all within the context of total product life-cycle management. With the advanced data management, forecasting and analytic capabilities of SAS Revenue Optimization, retailers will no longer have to rely solely on gut instinct or historical analysis.

SAS Revenue Optimization Suite
Retailers face several common challenges today:

• It’s difficult to achieve the best mix in pricing, promotion and markdown activities to maximize margins given the breadth and complexity of product assortments.
• One-size-fits-all pricing fails to account for product, customer- and market-level variations in the consumer’s response to promotions and markdowns.
• There isn’t an easy way to maximize margin across a large number of stores and products.

SAS Revenue Optimization drives profitability by empowering retailers to:

• Set and manage regular prices for products based on costs, regional demand patterns and competitive price information.
• Create what-if scenarios to determine the incremental lift in demand - and, thus, revenue - from planned promotions.
• Establish pricing strategies based on predicted margin contributions at category and item levels.
• Create permanent markdown plans that maximize margin and eliminate unnecessary markdowns.

"SAS Revenue Optimization Suite allows retailers - for the first time - to analyze and optimize pricing in all areas simultaneously," says Schafer. "In the past retailers were offered solutions that dealt with individual issues (e.g., promotional pricing or markdown optimization) and were not able to understand the dynamics among all the elements of pricing. It is virtually impossible to optimize one element of pricing unless all elements studied, forecast and optimized at the same time; this new solution provides retailers with this unique ability."

Built on a powerful foundation
The SAS Revenue Optimization Suite gets its power and speed from SAS®9, the industry’s leading business intelligence platform. SAS®9 provides comprehensive data management, business intelligence and analytic capabilities in an integrated set of products and solutions. This single platform results in significantly lower cost of ownership for any organization. Retailers can now create price, promotion and markdown plans at any level of detail desired - even to the SKU level at each store. In addition, the suite is fully extendable, meaning that organizations can plan strategically, stay focused and maintain a phased approach toward their specific revenue management goals.

More on this topic

	Success Stories
	White Papers
	Demos