CARY, NC (Sept. 5, 2007) – For the fifth consecutive year, CRM magazine has recognized SAS, the leader in business intelligence, for its industry-leading business solutions. At an award ceremony at the destinationCRM 2007 Conference, SAS was lauded as the CRM Market Winner in the business intelligence category and a CRM Market Leader for marketing automation.

The 2007 CRM Leader Awards recognize “vendors, consultants, and end-user companies focused on creating and cultivating rewarding customer experiences and relationships through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies.”

CRM Editorial Director David Myron said, “SAS has been a perpetually strong competitor in the CRM Market Leader awards for its industry-leading analytics and marketing automation. SAS continues to respond to the needs of its customers by building on its already impressive offerings. With the addition of the Business Intelligence category for 2007, it’s no surprise that SAS came out on top.”

“SAS Institute reigns on our leaderboard again this year as king of the business intelligence industry,” CRM writes in their September 2007 issue. “The vendor's near-perfect 4.5 score for functionality is proof of the comprehensiveness of its offerings. SAS also appears as a leader in our marketing automation category, but BI has always been what the Cary, N.C.-based company does best.”

The editors add that “end-user satisfaction as well as a vision that focuses on usability and vertical build-out has helped perpetuate SAS' success.”

Also quoted in the article, Cindi Howson, president of ASK and author of the BIScorecard, says SAS "continues to deliver incremental improvement -- with new visualization and dashboarding capabilities being the latest."

“It is this forward-looking mentality that keeps SAS number one,” concludes CRM.

In 2006, SAS was honored as the CRM Market Winner for analytics and a CRM Market Leader for marketing automation. For this year’s award, the analytics category was replaced by business intelligence.

The CRM Market Leader award recognizes the top vendors in eight categories. Each category includes six CRM vendors (one winner, four leaders and one company to watch), which are selected based on weighted criteria that include revenue, revenue growth, market share, reputation for customer satisfaction, depth of functionality and company direction.

While many CRM vendors are narrowly focused on point solutions, SAS provides a comprehensive suite of customer intelligence solutions that address campaign management, cross-sell/up-sell, customer retention, customer segmentation, e-mail marketing, event-driven marketing, campaign optimization, marketing mix analysis, marketing performance management and Web analytics. Customers worldwide using SAS to support customer initiatives include 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, American Honda Motor Co., DIRECTV, The Dow Chemical Co., First Citizens Bank, Hartford Life, Loyalty Management UK, Swisscom and World Wildlife Fund.

SAS Marketing Automation helps organizations improve response rates and revenues from marketing efforts by providing the ability to easily manage sophisticated, timely, personalized customer communication strategies. Built specifically to meet the needs of key members of the marketing process, only SAS Marketing Automation provides comprehensive data management, campaign management and advanced customer analytics in one integrated, easy-to-use solution.

For the third consecutive year DataFlux, a subsidiary of SAS, was selected as a CRM Market Winner in data quality.

Read the full story in the September 2007 issue of CRM magazine.