SAS...The Power to Know

Hong Kong (August 16, 2006) – SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today introduces its SAS® Retail Intelligence Solution (RIS) and SAS® Manufacturing Intelligence Solution (MIS) which are built on the integrated, open and extensible SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Platform, to the Hong Kong market. The combination of these new solutions and HP Integrity servers offers unmatched capabilities for organizations in retail, distribution and manufacturingin Hong Kong to turn vast amounts of data into insightful information to address today's unique business challenges.

“Every business has unique needs,” said Edvan Chan, General Manager, SAS Hong Kong and South China. “SAS offers targeted solutions addressing different business challenges, as well as turnkey solutions for various vertical markets. The SAS Retail Intelligence and Manufacturing Intelligence Solutions offer a winning combination of SAS technology and the domain expertise which we gained from our proven successful user cases worldwide, to solve business pains in these industries and reflected global best practices. Like all our vertical solutions, they are built on top of the integrated, open and extensible SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform to create and deliver accurate, in-depth analytics and intelligence.”

“For more than 20 years, HP and SAS have worked together to help customers gain insights into all aspects of their businesses, and achieve increased performance and reliability with SAS award-winning software solutions running on HP server platforms,” said Kris Chan, Director, Commercial Accounts and Alliances, Technology Solutions Group, HP Hong Kong. “HP Integrity servers offer unparalleled flexibility and simplified management so that customers have high-availability, scalability, and attractive cost-of-ownership for their SAS solutions.”

Globalization, product proliferation, diversification of sales channels and, most of all, changing customer demands have merged to create a cutthroat environment in which retailers struggle to turn a profit. Retailers must understand customer behaviour and buying habits well enough to make the right decisions about product, price, promotion and placement. At the same time, they must explore every facet of the organization across business units and geographies to understand and manage the costs involved in doing business.

Retailers have to manage huge volume of customer and transaction data, and work faster to deliver and track sophisticated, event-driven marketing communications with ever-tightening deadlines. They must turn business data into knowledge that empowers them to make faster and better decisions.
The SAS Retail Intelligence Solution (RIS)Fig1, developed through many successful implementations across the globe, spans the entire retail operation, comprising four key areas: performance management, customer intelligence, operational intelligence and merchandise intelligence, leveraging SAS retail analytics experience along with retail expertise and merchandising best practices.

SAS RIS can be tailored to meet retailers’ specific needs in key areas:

analyzing customer behaviour, transactions and store performances with pre-built analytical models;

optimizing marketing ROI and delivering more effective promotion campaigns given limited budgets, channel capacities and other constraints by powerful mathematical approaches to analyze effectiveness of past promotions and predict the uplift demand of planned promotions with greater accuracy

calculating base sales volume and demand lift with best-in-class demand forecasting and demand modelling tools, to achieve better in-stock positions; and

measuring and managing optimal sourcing strategies that achieve corporate objectives while effectively managing supply risks and reducing costs.

“SAS RIS helps retailers to focus on, monitor and analyze key activities, and respond proactively to pressures and changes,” said Edvan Chan. “They can transform data about customers, merchandise and operations into knowledge to make more informed decisions, gain a competitive advantage, strengthen customer and vendor loyalty, and improve profitability.”

With globalization causing more competition than ever, manufacturers can no longer rely on low prices, high quality and on-time delivery to keep them on top. They have extensive inventories to track and move, a greater number of products to generate, numerous suppliers to negotiate with and quality standards to maintain. They also have an ever-increasing need to acquire, satisfy and retain additional customers to remain profitable. Because of these complex pressures, it is imperative that all the links in the supply chain be managed successfully.

The SAS Manufacturing Intelligence Solutions (MIS) Fig 2spans four key areas of applications: production and service intelligence, customer intelligence, supplier intelligence and organizational intelligence, which help manufacturers to turn data into knowledge, enabling them to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their supply chain, manufacturing process and after-sales service network, thus maximizing profits with optimal levels of customer satisfaction.

Among their needs, production quality, service management and warranty analysis are particularly important. SAS MIS can help manufacturers through:

improving production quality with a wide range of specialized tools within the entire organization, from designing experiments and assessing product reliability to monitoring process stability and determining process capability;
identifying items that have reached reorder thresholds and then generating recommended order quantities for each item based on cost and service-level targets through spares management;
characterizing the past and making statistical inferences about the future in order to predict and prevent critical warranty issues; and
identifying questionable warranty claims through advanced analytics, so fraud can be detected before a claim is paid.

“SAS solutions are not just about technology. At SAS, we sincerely believe in partnering with our customers to provide success at all levels,” said Edvan Chan. “We offer training services, proven implementation methodologies and world-class technology solutions – all coordinated in a way that delivers rapid ROI.”

SAS is the leader in business intelligence software and services. Customers at 40,000 sites use SAS software to manage and gain insights from vast amounts of data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products. Only SAS offers leading data integration, intelligence storage, advanced analytics and traditional business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®.