SAS delivers first SAS^®9 solution specifically for retail

17 May 2004 - SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today unveiled SAS^® Marketing Automation for Retail, the first retail solution based on the SAS®9 Intelligence Platform. Through the new intelligence platform and enhanced analytics of SAS^®9, SAS Marketing Automation for Retail will help retailers gather, store, analyse and distribute information more quickly than ever before. And with the new user interfaces of SAS^®9, more people throughout a company will be able to tap SAS' powerful predictive analytics and data management capabilities to solve critical business pains.

"Retail marketing requires the aggregation of data from diverse customer data sources, analysis of customer behaviour and the integration of that insight into an effective customer communication process," said David Joseph, manager of global retail strategy at SAS. "To help retailers truly maximise the profitability of every customer relationship, SAS has developed an easy-to-use marketing automation solution that frees marketers from IT resource limitations. It also provides improved efficiency and effectiveness at every stage of the marketing process -- from setting strategy to targeting opportunities, implementing campaign initiatives and measuring results."

SAS Marketing Automation for Retail provides marketers with the resources to meet increasing demand for frequent, complex customer communications without sacrificing the depth and precision that is essential for effective marketing. Through an intuitive graphical interface, business users can easily deploy the results of advanced analytics to drive personalised communications using reliable customer intelligence from SAS.

In-depth campaign management functions enable users to optimise and control complex campaigns across multiple channels - direct mail, email, catalogue, in-store, etc. -- as well as plan and schedule numerous campaigns in quick succession.

Integrated support for all stakeholders in campaign process
True marketing automation can only be achieved through efficient collaboration among the different members of the marketing group. Until now, companies have grappled with the challenge of finding a marketing automation solution that offers different capabilities for different types of users. SAS Marketing Automation for Retail fully supports the activities of all key marketing campaign participants, including business users, database marketers, quantitative analysts and IT professionals. Once a smooth flow of information is established, repeatable processes can be implemented, improving the efficiency of each customer communication.

With SAS Marketing Automation for Retail, all business units will have access to SAS' powerful data management and analytic capabilities in a way that directly supports their role in the organisation. This application integration broadens the potential user base by empowering specialists and generalists to work together more efficiently.

New user interfaces -- specific to the different roles within marketing -- help SAS Marketing Automation for Retail meet the needs of all stakeholders in the marketing process ranging from analytic modellers to campaign managers to marketing executives.

In addition, an enterprise-class infrastructure and embedded SAS analytics allow business users to easily leverage data mining, market-basket analysis, link analysis, forecasting and optimisation, as well as segmentation, profiling and behaviour analysis to create targeted customer intelligence.

"With SAS, retailers can understand customers' past behaviour and predict their future action, both individually and as larger segments. Retailers can also apply predictive insight directly and dynamically in each individual campaign to ensure that they have selected the most accurate target audience. Only SAS has the sophistication to drive full, graphically represented campaign programs by using statistically derived pilot campaigns and multistage, multiwave and multichannel deployment," added Joseph.

Unified view of customers across the enterprise
Most retailers have customer data stored on multiple systems scattered throughout geographic locations or business units. SAS provides a unified view of customers that incorporates information from all touch points and channels across the enterprise.

Automated processes build and refresh customer data repositories that extend across all data sources, and SAS software organises data structures in business terms, meaning that marketers can directly access even the most complex data through a relevant business label.

SAS' customer data management technologies provide a centrally managed enterprise system that ensures information in repositories is consistent, secure, accurate and comprehensible to users. These technologies also make it simple to incorporate new marketing data such as prospect lists, purchased demographic data and suppression lists.

Another significant advantage of SAS Marketing Automation for Retail's infrastructure is that organisations can now enjoy the full benefits of leading database-marketing capabilities on an open platform. This platform provides interoperability with their existing infrastructure, other SAS solutions and other operational platforms. Unlike other offerings on the market, SAS' open system lets organisations fine-tune the analytic engine to include their own insights about their customer's behaviour, incorporate internal best-practices and leverage existing IT investments, such as data warehouses and CRM systems.

Understand marketing activity results
A vital part of marketing is to measure and understand the effectiveness of previous initiatives. This analysis provides the insight to continuously improve the design of subsequent campaigns based on a greater understanding of what works well for different customers. In addition, for ongoing marketing campaigns it is essential to know when things are going badly. Responses may be tapering off, signalling that it is time to terminate the promotion. Response may be too high, causing stock to run low. Gaining an immediate understanding of variances is essential for controlling and correcting any issues.

SAS Marketing Automation for Retail allows users to fully understand responses to communications, not just by tracking direct responses, but also by analysing changes in customer behaviour that might result from communications, allowing marketers to identify degrees of responsiveness. Campaign effectiveness reports combine this response analysis with budget expectations thus delivering a full picture of the financial return achieved by each marketing initiative.

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 96 of the top 100 of the 2003 Fortune Global 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 nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know^®.

For further information, please contact the team at the SAS Press Office on:
Tel: +44 (0) 1628 490490
e-mail saspressoffice@suk.sas.com
For more information on SAS, please visit www.sas.com/uk

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Copyright © 2004 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.