SAS fights fraud, builds customer relationships via social network, social media analysis

Innovative software uncovers hidden relationships and insights in networks, text

SYDNEY, Australia & AUCKLAND New Zealand  (10 Aug 2009)  –  SAS, the leader in business analytics, has launched innovative new software to fight fraud, but also to better understand customer sentiment. SAS® Social Network Analysis and SAS’ social media analysis solution help organisations uncover hidden relationships between individuals and data; detect patterns and trends; and mine text and other unstructured data.

From phishing and skimming to claims fraud and money laundering, increasingly sophisticated fraud techniques are causing huge losses and harming customer relationships. So too are negative online comments that quickly spread through Web sites, blogs, Twitter and other channels, resulting in lost business and damaged brands.

The rapid adoption of social media has given the public a platform for expression and generated huge amounts of data on customer likes and dislikes. Financial transactions also generate vast quantities of data, with potential fraud buried deep. In this era of relationships, the same business analytics that sift through data volumes to detect hidden fraud patterns can also strengthen brands by revealing insights in customer interactions.

MINING SOCIAL NETWORKS
SAS Social Network Analysis applies link analysis to fraud detection and prevention, marketing, customer segmentation and more.  Using it within the SAS® Fraud Framework, insurers and government agencies can pinpoint suspicious individuals and transactions and stop additional fraud. Telecommunications and bank marketers can measure and predict the influence of different customer segments on acquisition, retention and up-sells. With this intelligence, companies can boost new offerings by initially targeting the highest-influence segments.

“Social network analysis software can help companies delve deeper into their customer and transactional data to discover patterns, linkages and connections,” said Avivah Litan, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “Effective social network analysis is based on very strong analytics such as data mining, and sophisticated visualisation technology. In making the invisible visible, social network analysis is an effective and emerging tool for fighting fraud but also for better understanding customers.” 

To fight fraud, SAS Social Network Analysis helps investigators go beyond transaction and customer views to analyse all related activities and relationships within a network: shared addresses, phone numbers, employment information, account ownership and other transactional data. The software’s visualisation capabilities speed access to full customer details and all related parties and networks, resulting in quicker case assessments and better dossiers. Analysing networks graphically makes it easier to identify key opinion leaders and associated communities of interest, and uncover previously unknown relationships.

SAS Social Network Analysis includes patent-pending technology, Net-CHAID, which helps fraud investigators and brand and marketing managers examine and manipulate very large clusters for easier analysis. SAS CEO Jim Goodnight helped write code for this technology.

ANALYSING SOCIAL MEDIA
SAS’ social media analysis solution -- coming in the fourth quarter -- is powered by Sentiment Analysis Manager from SAS’ Teragram division. Through natural language processing and text mining, the software captures consumer product reviews and brand comments from mainstream sites such as Amazon and Overstock, message boards, and social media outlets like blogs and Twitter.

Sentiment Analysis Manager automatically locates and analyses digital content in real time to determine the writer’s emotion, spot changing trends, and uncover potential product defects at an early stage. The software searches and evaluates positive, mixed and negative phrases in text, including tricky phrasing like, “this is not the best camera available.”

“Leaving online comments and posting reviews on computers, books, and many other products is becoming more and more common. So too is the use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. This trend has caught the eye of marketers who are wrestling with how to include social media as part of their overall marketing outreach,” said IDC analyst Sue Feldman. “Using text mining, natural language processing and other emerging technologies like those found in Sentiment Analysis Manager from SAS’ Teragram division, marketers can glean intelligence from these sites, gain a more complete view of their brands’ reputation, and better understand the sentiments of their customers.”

R&D INNOVATION
Development of SAS Social Network Analysis was led by the SAS Advanced Analytics Lab, a premier analytical consulting group formed in 2007. “Working closely with customers and SAS R&D, the Advanced Analytics Lab is one of SAS’ many centres of innovation. It leverages SAS’ core analytical expertise to apply the latest statistical and mathematical techniques to solve important customer problems,” said Brocklebank.

[1] Source: “As the Economy Contracts, the Digital Universe Expands,” by John Gantz and David Reinsel, IDC, Multimedia White Paper, May 2009

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