LISBON, PORTUGAL - Saving money and increasing sales are important objectives for any business. With these goals in mind, SAS, the leader in business and analytical intelligence, has announced that it will deliver its patent-pending forecasting product, SASŪ Forecast Server, to help companies improve the accuracy of their forecasts and the manageability of the overall forecast process.

This latest forecasting product from SAS will feature critical new capabilities, such as time series mining to uncover time-related patterns and trends. This represents an advance that's well ahead of what other vendors can currently offer. An interactive user interface for easy forecasting will also be included.

"SAS Forecast Server will allow businesses to 'turbo charge' their forecasting efforts to better anticipate and meet customer demand, enhance supply chain efficiencies, and boost profitability on their often razor-thin margins," said Anne Milley, director of technology marketing at SAS.

"SAS has long been known for its ability to provide deeper analytic capabilities to our customers than other vendors can, and SAS Forecast Server will raise the bar even higher in the predictive analytics market. With SAS' sophisticated modeling techniques - such as time series mining - and unsurpassed scalability, we can create reliable and understandable forecasts that automatically adjust to changing market conditions. This makes it easy for critical information to be distributed throughout an enterprise faster than ever before."

SAS Forecast Server will deliver significant value to organizations within any industry, allowing them to plan for the future more effectively. For example, retailers will be able to automatically forecast sales for millions of SKUs, helping them account for seasonality, changing customer preferences, regional differences and other key factors that directly affect the bottom line. In addition, banks and other financial institutions will be able to better allocate their dollars by understanding ATM usage patterns over time. Manufacturing and pharmaceutical businesses will also gain significant value by using SAS Forecast Server to anticipate and plan for product and customer demands.