Loyalty Management UK (LMUK), operators of Nectar, the UK's largest loyalty programme, has appointed SAS UK, the leader in business intelligence, to support LMUK in providing additional value to customers, sponsors and suppliers as part of the Nectar programme.

LMUK currently has eleven Nectar sponsors - Sainsbury's, Barclaycard, Debenhams, BP, Threshers, Vodafone, Adams, e-Energy, all:sports, Winemark and Ford. LMUK provides these sponsors with insights into activities such as campaign selections, marketing opportunities and performance measurements. The use of SAS' award-winning data mining software will help LMUK to deliver the business critical Nectar points mailing significantly faster and will also bring the next generation of analytics and predictive modelling to the segmentation process, ultimately enhancing the programme for collectors of Nectar points.

"LMUK looked for a supplier that could provide a business critical solution with demanding performance, flexibility and scalability requirements. These were critical to us due to the speed with which the Nectar programme has grown. We have already grown from four sponsors to eleven in little over a year, which has resulted in a huge increase in the amount of data that we handle. SAS is able to provide LMUK with the sophisticated analysis we require at the speed we require. SAS' size, stability and length of time in the market were also key factors in the selection process," said Duncan Stirling, Client Services Director, LMUK.

"Organisations are increasingly recognising that improved access to, and advanced analysis of data is key to strong performance," said Phil Bond, CEO, SAS UK. "LMUK is leading the trend for customer loyalty schemes in the UK and we look forward to delivering the knowledge they require to support their sponsors, suppliers and customers."

About LMUK
LMUK
LMUK is a company under common ownership with Loyalty Management International (LMI) and was set up specifically to launch and operate Nectar. LMUK's management has a total of over 90 years' experience in the loyalty market, with worldwide operations for which it has been responsible that have been operating for a total of 35 years.

Nectar
Nectar is a coalition loyalty programme in the UK that was developed by Keith Mills and his team over a period of 18 months. The programme was launched in September 2002. Nectar has brought together leading UK retailers to offer UK consumers a superior programme that truly rewards customers on everyday purchases.

About SAS
SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites - including 90 percent of the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organisations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For more than 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know^®.

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