Fundamental to transforming our nation's schools is the need for accurate information to more precisely measure teachers' influence on student learning. Understanding the impact of educa­tors on student outcomes is necessary for effective policy and instructional decisions and can allow classrooms to thrive by implementing strategies that maximize the potential of both parties. But to go beyond simply tracking outputs and instead, leverage outputs to identify and measure outcomes, requires addressing all levels of the education spectrum – student, teacher, school and district. The resulting effective delivery of instruction will not only provide better outcomes for students, but will also support the necessary development of a future workforce.

The economy has created an environment in which schools have to do more with less because of budgetary hardships. Technology can improve teacher and administrative efficiencies as well as prepare students with the skills needed to become competitive candidates in the work force. This report highlights key financial resources available to fund Campus Management Systems (CMS) projects as well as identifies other funding streams affecting education.

This report reviews how educational institutions are using technologies to achieve more effective, transparent outcomes. Longitudinal data systems have become increasingly effective at tracking performance over the years to ensure students pass state and federal assessments and succeed. Moreover, technology helps educators learn from the past to make better predictions to guide future decisions. This report discusses the role of technology in education and how institutions, educators and students can benefit.

SAS, Teradata and Platform Computing collaborated with ComputerWorld to produce this tech dossier/white paper on using high-performance computing and business analytics to transform data assets into meaningful insights, gain faster time to results and maximize the productivity of resources to drive sustainable growth. The Tech Dossier will help prospects and customers learn how grid computing and in-database technology can be combined with SAS Business Analytics to drive proactive, evidence-based business decisions.

The concept of analytics encompasses a wide range of techniques and processes for collecting, classifying and interpreting data to reveal patterns, anomalies, key variables and relationships. The goal is to derive new insights that drive better decisions and more effective operational processes can be achieved. That was the topic of a SAS webinar in the Applying Business Analytics series. This paper provides a summary of that webcast, which highlighted the methods and data requirements necessary to ensure the success of advanced analytic applications.

Online retailer Gilt Groupe understands its customers and what they want, which in turn enables them to better segment customers and drive them to the sales most relevant to them. This paper provides a summary of a webcast in the SAS "Applying Business Analytics Webcast Series" that explored how Gilt Groupe uses analytics to create a signature shopping experience with distinctive appeal for each of its millions of members, even though members have different tastes, needs and values.

Studies show that companies that invest heavily in advanced capabilities outperform the S&P 500 on average by 64%.This key learning summary from Harvard Business Review featuring Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris explores why and how analytics is key to making the best decisions for organizations and for bottom-line profitability. Learn about the analytical stages of capability, the top-performing companies that use analytics, and the mix of capabilities that are imperative for making analytics a success in any organization.

For organizations that want to use data to guide high-risk/high-reward business decisions, spreadsheets fall short. Forward-looking organizations worldwide have been evolving from renegade spreadsheets to analytics-driven decision-making with governance. However, a lot of organizations are not taking full advantage because they are stymied by challenges related to data quality, data sharing across systems and organizational entities, isolated analytic processes, and a perennial focus on hindsight reporting rather than predictive insight. The need to change these realities was a driving force behind the SAS Applying Business Analytics webinar series for 2010. This paper presents highlights from the series.

This paper describes five business analytics styles used today and the building blocks required in implementing these styles. Building a business analytics architecture to create a competitive advantage requires multiple styles as the needs of the organization change. Organizations are seeing new opportunities to incorporate business analytics into operational systems and processes.

Fierce competition among insurance providers, asset managers and banks for the money and attention of customers, agents and financial advisers forces organizations to rethink and retool as they try to capitalize on opportunities in the marketplace. To differentiate themselves and capture a bigger, more profitable piece of the pie, they are turning to analytics, but technological, organizational and cultural challenges serve as barriers to implementation. This paper will help insurers develop and act on analytic strategies to enable business goals.

This research report explores how leading insurers are using business analytics solutions to reduce reaction times to competitive pressure, respond more efficiently to market changes, improve the precision and efficacy of operational decisions, and increase business managers effectiveness in driving organizational value.

Instead of just calculating and reporting a number for compliance, organizations must go beyond calculation into activity modeling if real understanding, leadership and goals are to be achieved. Learn about the differences between calculating and modeling emissions, the critical parallels between cost and greenhouse gas accounting, collecting and managing data, and using activity-based modeling to gain invaluable insight to calculate and set reduction goals of your carbon footprint.

While many areas of government have successfully employed aspects of fact-based decision making, current initiatives to reduce waste and expenses correspond with what business analytics offers organizations. This white paper produced by BusinessWeek looks at how government agencies are struggling to embrace the spirit of initiatives like the President's Management Agenda and how business analytics can give them an anchor on which to operate as they search for operational agility based on deeper insights, better answers and faster reaction times geared toward the future. 

For organizations wanting to derive valuable insights through data analysis, there is certainly no shortage of analytical tools and technologies to choose from. The downside of having so many choices is that it’s difficult to know which tools to give to which users. This is further complicated by the fact that most users play multiple roles, and each role has different information requirements. Plus, these patterns vary by industry, geography, corporate culture, and individual preferences, so there is no surefire scheme for outfitting users with appropriate tools. The report brings some clarity to this complex picture by examining the landscape of available analytical tools and the types of users they serve best.

Analytics can have a significant effect on a company's performance and profitability. A February 2011 webinar in the SAS Applying Business Analytics Series looked at how advanced analytics have redefined the possibilities and answered critical business questions for Oberweis Dairy. This paper presents insights from that webinar.

In spite of the promise of business analytics – and new technologies that make analytic power more accessible than ever – few organizations have taken full advantage. They have questions about where to focus their efforts, how to address data management issues, and what types of analytic techniques to use where. That was the topic of a SAS-sponsored webinar in the "Applying Business Analytics" series, in which participants offered practical advice about how to make analytics pervasive in the organization, predictive for maximum value, and proactive to drive meaningful action. This paper provides a summary of that webinar.

This white paper discusses some of the key infrastructure challenges that IT faces in meeting the ever-increasing demands for intelligence across their organizations. It provides an overview of how the platform for SAS Business Analytics can help overcome those challenges. It also describes SAS strengths within each of the platform components -- data integration, analytics, and reporting. Most importantly, it outlines how SAS is here to help organizations achieve success through analytic solutions built upon an integrated framework. 

This paper, based on research by nGenera Corporation, provides answers to six key questions that executives should be asking about how to use business analytics to improve performance and compete successfully -- from "Where should we leverage business analytics?" and "What's the payoff?" to "What kinds of people do we need?" and more.

For many business users, the search for useful, valuable information is time-consuming and inefficient. Business visualization can transform how you see, discover and share insights hidden in your data. This paper offers highlights from a September 2010 webinar that showed new ways business users can bring movement, graphics and data together to explore data and share insights, right from the desktop.

A growing number of organizations are creating competency centers or "centers of excellence" to overcome obstacles that prevent data and analytical talent from generating enterprisewide insight. That was the topic of a webinar in the SAS "Applying Business Analytics" series, originally broadcast in August 2010. This paper provides a summary of that webcast and makes the case for an organized, strategic and enterprisewide approach to analytics

Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources to provide a unified view or to make it analysis-ready. It improves the flow of accurate, enterprisewide information, enhances data quality and enables collaboration across the organization. This paper looks at the best practices involved in a maturing data management practice, as outlined in a SAS-sponsored webinar in the Applying Business Analytics series.

The women's specialty retailer, Chico's FAS Inc., needed to gain a more holistic view of its middle- to high-income clientele, but the company was operating with a fixed data model that didn't adapt well to a changing environment. Data was sent out for modeling, so the results were often stale by the time campaigns were developed. This paper summarizes an event in the "Applying Business Analytics Webinar Series," in which the company's director of CRM and enterprise information management describes how Chico's has benefited from a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for customer and campaign management. With its SaaS solution, Chico's can create timely, personalized offers, and has dramatically reduced the time needed to produce campaigns.

The ability to make effective, fact-based decisions is not based on data quantity. In fact, most organizations are awash in data. Rather, success is based on an organization's ability to discover more meaningful and predictive insights from the data it already has. This paper provides a summary of a SAS webinar in the Applying Business Analytics series that showed how predictive analytics and data mining can reveal new insights out of existing data to improve business performance.

This white paper reviews a portion of a research program conducted by BusinessWeek Research Services designed to understand how companies can optimize business analytics to improve fact-based decision making and to determine the attitudes and opinions of C-level executives with regard to the use and value of business analytics. It is part of a series of white papers for C-level executives intended to facilitate sharing the most important insights from the research. 

Amid the current climate of greater demand for both environmental awareness and corporate accountability, organizations are finding that success is increasingly being measured not only by financial performance, but also by ecological and social accomplishments as well. In addition, the current economic climate has reinforced the need to plan for long-term success. This white paper, based on a launched research program conducted by BusinessWeek Research Services, looks at how the most forward-thinking enterprises are using analytics to their advantage by applying it to sustainability.

Data is today's most effective competitive weapon. But how does an organization make the best use of data, and what is the proper role of IT? Based on insights from IT leaders about their companies' use of data analytics and their involvement in it, this paper describes how organizations can foster a culture of data analytics that promotes cooperation and collaboration between IT and business.

Organizations spend much time and money searching for a magic formula for the perfect forecast, yet still get bad forecasts. But it doesn't have to be this way. This paper provides a summary of a webinar in the SAS “Applying Business Analytics” series originally broadcast in July 2010 that discussed how businesses can achieve better accuracy and forecasting process efficiency by understanding the nature of demand patterns and where forecasting process is adding value — or not.

Claims payouts and loss adjustment expenses can account for up to 80% of an insurance company’s revenue. The way an insurance company manages the claims process is fundamental to its profits and long term sustainability. Equally important is the role claims processing plays in customer satisfaction, renewal and retention. This white paper discusses how predictive insurance claims processing can help insurers make the right decision, at the right time to the right party.

The benefits of providing your employees with professional technical training are quantifiable -- as are the costs of not providing formal training. Citing numerous studies on the effects of formal and "informal" software training (ad hoc attempts by employees to self-train) in major corporations, this white paper provides compelling evidence that expert training maximizes the return on IT investment. The author goes on to describe SAS Education's approach to training, and how it helps SAS customers exploit the full competitive value of their software.

To meet global competition, a nation must spend more on education. While that is true, it is even more important how the money gets spent. There is legitimate concern in both Europe and the US that education systems are not fully preparing communities to thrive in today's knowledge-based economy. Indeed, if communities and countries want to prosper on the road ahead, we must support bold, innovative, and transformative education policies and practices. This white paper presents five guiding principles for evaluating 21st century educational policies.

According to analysts, business intelligence applications are a top priority for CIOs. To help cut through the clutter of conflicting and overstated vendor claims, SAS has developed a comprehensive framework that can be used to evaluate any and all BI vendors. This white paper outlines the criteria included in this framework, which include measures of technology, alignment with customer needs corporate vision and geographic scope.

Generally speaking, models are abstractions of real-life systems used to facilitate understanding and to aid in decision making. However, models mean different things in different disciplines. Engineers, financial analysts and statisticians all employ modeling as a core tool, but each discipline would define models differently. Even with the differences in how models are defined and developed, all disciplines need ways to communicate models, perform what-if analyses and simulations. This paper highlights the use of the different model profilers in JMP to visualize and perform what-if analysis and Monte Carlo simulation for models defined using SAS/STAT^®, Microsoft Excel and engineering tools.

Analysis of microarray data is used extensively to search for and discover clues to the molecular causes of important biological phenomena. As microarrays increase in popularity, the demand has grown for biologist-friendly applications that simplify the quality-control and analysis processes and present useful graphical representations of high-dimensional data sets. Expression Console, recently introduced by Affymetrix, provides a simple interface for normalization and summarization of data from Affymetrix CEL files to produce CHP files for further analysis. This paper explains how the Affymetrix Expression CHP Wizard in JMP Genomics automates many steps in a comprehensive microarray analysis workflow by combining an interactive interface with standard JMP Genomics tools.

Exon analysis is a powerful complement to traditional 3’ expression analysis, providing new opportunities to identify biologically relevant splicing patterns. Alternative splicing is already known to play a role in guiding developmental processes such as tissue differentiation (3), and changes in alternative splicing patterns have been associated with cancer and other diseases. As next-generation sequencing technologies expand in popularity, knowledge of common and rare alternative splicing events is likely to expand greatly, further increasing the size and complexity of these data sets. JMP Genomics meets this challenge with intelligent filtering capabilities to reduce large data sets to reliable results, and powerful analytics capable of distinguishing statistically relevant exon-level and transcript-level changes using any platform that may detect alternative splice events.

Release 3.1 of JMP Genomics software from SAS adds specific menu items for copy number analysis. In this white paper, we will review a simple JMP Genomics workflow to determine differences in copy number or B-allele frequencies. These workflows have been tested on Illumina DNA Analysis BeadChips, including the Human1M DNA Analysis BeadChips.

Statistical methods and software available for identifying common and rare copy number variations (CNVs) are still evolving. Here, tools in JMP Genomics 4.1 were used to find shared regions of CNV and correlate SNP intensities with gene expression differences. A similar approach can be applied to examine pairwise correlations between other genomic measures.

One of the best ways to understand data is through data visualization. The art of presenting data visually has matured from static graphs and dashboard widgets to interactive, animated graphs. Adding advanced analytics to support these graphs provides a competitive edge to companies by helping them better explore and understand their data, predict potential outcomes and decide with confidence. This paper discusses the power of visualization for analyzing data and spotting trends you can act on. Effective visual techniques show how users can better explore and understand their data, discover trends and patterns, and communicate their findings to a non-technical, non-analytical audience.

This paper shares insights from Joe Skorupa, group editor-in-chief of RIS News and Neil Thall, president of NT2, Inc. who participated in a SAS-sponsored webinar in July, 2010.

Supermarkets have emerged from the current economic crisis in better shape than most other segments in retailing. What did the successful companies do differently? How did grocers respond to the economic pressures? Where did they invest their creativity and capital? What strategies did they take to trim operating expenses without diminishing the customer experience? Panelists pointed to five notable trends that emerged from the study, which spanned several tiers of supermarket chains.

Many providers are struggling with the increasing complexity and cost of networks, service choices and business processes. Read this white paper to learn how a customer value optimization approach can help service providers understand how customers engage with the company, identify ways to reduce churn, and systematically record customer management activities and results. You will also learn how a customer value optimization approach transformed the profit picture for a top-tier wireless carrier.

Everybody's talking about customer analytics and how they can help organizations market more effectively. But for many marketing professionals today, there's a gap between theory and execution. This paper provides managers and other marketing professionals an introduction to applying analytics to marketing to significantly improve outcomes. It explains not only why you need to make this shift to analytically driven marketing strategies and plans, but also how you get started and what kinds of tools you need to develop and execute plans.

In the smart grid/smart meter era, data integration strategies that enable analytics and optimization can transform how utilities view customers and provide many opportunities to boost returns. But to achieve a customer-centric orientation, utilities must be able to: • Find profitable growth opportunities. • Optimize marketing communications. • Maximize cross-business impact.

Based on a SAS-sponsored webinar with Electric Light & Power, this paper can help utilities understand how to approach this fundamental change to their business.

This collection is part of the ANA Magazine Thought Leadership Series sponsored by SAS. The articles explore the variety of ways to use analytics to create marketing functions that are more accountable and profitable. Learn how Staples used analytics to increase campaign response rates.

It is no longer sufficient for an organization to be lean, agile and efficient. Its entire supply chain must also perform as the company itself does. If some customers are excessively high-maintenance, they erode profit margins. Who are these troublesome customers, and how much do they drag down profits? Once you know, what corrective actions should you take? This detailed white paper explores the value of activity-based cost management (ABC/M) in determining customer profitability. It describes the insights gained from validly measuring customer profitability and how organizations apply performance management systems to manage changing strategies for increasing profit, reducing cost and improving performance throughout the enterprise.

Most pharmaceutical companies focus their sales and marketing activities on the top-decile prescribing physicians for a given therapeutic area, based on purchased data. But such practices are no longer yielding desired results. This white paper discusses why now is the right time to make sales and marketing decisions based on deeper analytic insights - using predictive modeling - and how organizations that take control over their own physician targeting will get more timely insights, targeting decisions aligned with business issues and real competitive advantage.

This paper provides insights from a Webinar from the AMA Marketing Effectiveness Online Seminar Series, presented in association with the American Marketing Association and SAS. The webinar discussed how new technologies such as real-time decisioning and proactive marketing enable marketers to leverage customer insight right at the point of contact -- even adapting and responding to knowledge gained during the interaction as it unfolds.

We’re in the midst of information overload. Consumers have an endless number of options, and marketers are collecting massive amounts of data. Do we use our customer insights effectively? Are we increasing profits and deepening customer relationships, or are we misinterpreting data or using it to over communicate? This webinar summary from Harvard Business Review features customer insight specialist John Dee Fair (previously of Sephora, Wells Fargo and Williams Sonoma) and his three-step “Building Better Decisions” sales strategy. This paper addresses topics like predictive modeling and right offer/right time marketing, and outlines best practices and common pitfalls marketers encounter throughout the life cycle of a marketing campaign. 

This white paper provides a blueprint for action for senior marketers and decision makers across the enterprise. It provides straightforward advice on how to build a more durable and profitable customer base by:

- Building a more competitive business model. - Enabling customer-centric business strategies in a product-centric organization. - Turning expanding volumes of customer data into actionable insight for smarter decision making. - Providing a roadmap for integrating technology to achieve competitive advantage.

How does a financial services organization go about moving to a data-driven, customer-centric business model, and what can realistically be done to start moving in that direction today? That was the question of the day at the inaugural SAS Financial Services Executive Summit. This paper provides a summary of a panel discussion at the event in which professionals from the banking, insurance and retail industries shared their ideas about the critical role of analytics in making the shift to a customer focus.

This research report from SAS, Peppers & Rogers and Jubelirer Research provides insights into building authentic and profitable long-term customer relationships. The research outlined here attempts to understand how a broad range of companies manage customer experiences, explore the advantages of superior customer experience, document the enablers and inhibitors to excellent customer experiences, and assess the maturation of companies along a developmental spectrum.

Up until recently, pharmaceutical companies largely followed a product-centric marketing model. However, growing threats to profitability -- such as increasing generic competition, weak new product pipelines, leaner margins, new regulatory and payer pressures, and less access to physicians -- are compelling the industry to change to a more customer-centric business model. In a recent webcast co-sponsored by Pharmaceutical Executive and SAS, experts discussed nuances and best practices around the idea of a customer-focused marketing environment, starting with a data infrastructure that provides deeper customer insights, then analyzing the data to deliver more relevant information and messaging, which in turn drives customer engagement and deeper relationships. This paper summarizes the highlights of that webcast.

While it is essential to employ customer-centric strategies to improve revenue, it is also necessary to balance customer needs with shareholder value. This white paper outlines a method for achieving this balance by tying retention spending to customer financial value. You will learn how to evaluate customers by combining financial value with loyalty, and about requirements for a properly customer-focused strategy.

Marketing is about more than just campaign management, data warehousing and social media; it's really more about connecting everything that has to do with revenue. A recent AMA webinar, sponsored by SAS, examined this concept, exploring how breaking down organizational silos, encouraging and celebrating risk-taking, and recognizing every employee and customer as a potential marketer were key strategies for driving the relevance of marketing in a digital world. This paper provides a summary of that webinar.

Effective marketing is about far more than just running campaigns. It is much more than pooling marketing information into marketing databases for marketers to use. It is about connecting what marketing professionals do to the bottom line. It is possible to make that connection if companies succeed in three key ways: 1) Find the most profitable opportunities based on a common view of customers and prospects; 2) Take the best marketing action from a multitude of customers, offers and possible combinations; 3) Maximize cross-business impact and show the effect of marketing activities on overall profitability. In a webcast for marketing professionals, Steve Ashe of SAS described these three keys and showcased four analytics-based tools to achieve them: marketing automation, marketing optimization, real-time decision management, and marketing performance management. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

Nothing has generated more buzz – or brought more scrutiny – than social media, specifically how to get more value out of it.  Organizations realize social media generates awareness, but can you link it to tangible business value? If you have lots of online traffic, is that a good indicator?  No. If all you’re doing is counting hits, you’re not tracking anything that is meaningful in today’s marketplace. In a webcast co-hosted by the AMA and SAS, presenters described three areas of focus for using social media, and the five best practices for being effective in social media. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

As Foxwoods Resort Casino expanded and diversified, management saw the need to gain a broader view of the customer and to use that information to build customer value. In a recent webcast sponsored by SAS and Netezza, Foxwoods' Todd Williams talked about how the company redefined its data warehouse environment to be able to generate a comprehensive view of the customer to improve customer service and promotions. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

Marketers at small and midsize businesses are dependent on satisfied, loyal customers. But determining how to satisfy today's highly empowered customers in the face of budget and human resource constraints is problematic, especially for small and midsize organizations facing unprecedented amounts of customer data. The good news – if harnessed properly, this data can turn into a gold mine of customer insight. This paper illustrates why shifting to analytically driven marketing strategies can significantly improve marketing effectiveness while reducing costs. It also describes how to develop and carry out a successful plan.

This white paper was designed to present new ideas for measuring and acting on customer value in retail banking. Written by SAS and Peppers & Rogers Group, it presents practical, real-world advice on how retail banks can increase profitability from customer value insight without a business model overhaul. Specifically, the paper provides guidance to help you refocus strategy, retool the mechanics of measurement and realign the organization around customers.

As companies face today's challenging business environment, they are forced to innovate, adjust and reevaluate strategy. Many companies ride out trying times struggling to keep their heads above water, while companies that innovate and plan accordingly for the future of their business are growing more than ever. This paper from the HBR.org Insight Center outlines a unique approach to growth and identifies the keys to strengthen your business for a profitable future.

To measure the effectiveness of marketing investments, marketers must overcome numerous data challenges. This white paper describes, at a high level, a proven approach to data collection challenges that exist within large enterprises. It leads you through the entire process of gathering data, creating marketing mix models and implementing results.

Current trends justify utilities gaining every cash flow improvement option available, including setting a framework for the use of smart meter data to improve collections. By identifying and predicting the conditions when a customer may have trouble paying their bills and then developing plans for helping those customers using the tremendous data already present, utilities can create advanced, customized bill payment plans. This white paper describes how utilities can use predictive analytics to optimize their bad debt collections, with inherent business value that is quantifiable and often significant.

Everybody's talking about customer analytics and how they can help organizations market more effectively. But for many marketing professionals today, there's a gap between theory and execution. This paper provides managers and other marketing professionals an introduction to applying analytics to marketing to significantly improve outcomes. It explains not only why you need to make this shift to analytically driven marketing strategies and plans, but also how you get started and what kinds of tools you need to develop and execute plans.

Recounting the CTO Telecom Summit's peer-to-peer roundtable facilitated by SAS CIO Suzanne Gordon, this paper shares the challenges and best practices in effective customer data management from the CIOs and CTOs of leading service providers. Participants addressed cultural issues, including building collaboration and information sharing, obtaining clear business objectives and bridging the business-IT divide. They also discussed technology issues, such as ensuring data quality and integration to provide a holistic customer view to business leaders.

Everybody's talking about customer analytics and how they can help organizations market more effectively. But for many marketing professionals today, there's a gap between theory and execution. This paper provides managers and other marketing professionals an introduction to applying analytics to marketing to significantly improve outcomes. It explains not only why you need to make this shift to analytically driven marketing strategies and plans, but also how you get started and what kinds of tools you need to develop and execute plans.

Lack of insight into managed markets data means information lies stagnant on spreadsheets, takes much longer to gather and views all health plans as essentially the same. And the risk of continuing on this "do nothing" path is losing not only insight, but any chance of profitability.

This white paper describes how the managed markets industry can capture both organizational efficiencies and profits by harnessing data with advanced analytics.

This collection is part of the ANA Magazine Thought Leadership Series sponsored by SAS. The articles explore the variety of ways to use analytics to create marketing functions that are more accountable and profitable. Learn how Staples used analytics to increase campaign response rates.

Pharmaceutical sales and marketing professionals face a unique set of challenges in their efforts to boost sales enough to recoup staggering development costs. This white paper explores the possibilities of data integration and advanced analytics in marketing and selling pharmaceuticals. The paper also includes a list of key analytical techniques and several industry case studies.

Recounting the CTO Telecom Summit's peer-to-peer roundtable facilitated by SAS CIO Suzanne Gordon, this paper shares the challenges and best practices in effective customer data management from the CIOs and CTOs of leading service providers. Participants addressed cultural issues, including building collaboration and information sharing, obtaining clear business objectives and bridging the business-IT divide. They also discussed technology issues, such as ensuring data quality and integration to provide a holistic customer view to business leaders.

How does a financial services organization go about moving to a data-driven, customer-centric business model, and what can realistically be done to start moving in that direction today? That was the question of the day at the inaugural SAS Financial Services Executive Summit. This paper provides a summary of a panel discussion at the event in which professionals from the banking, insurance and retail industries shared their ideas about the critical role of analytics in making the shift to a customer focus.

Effective marketing is about far more than just running campaigns. It is much more than pooling marketing information into marketing databases for marketers to use. It is about connecting what marketing professionals do to the bottom line. It is possible to make that connection if companies succeed in three key ways: 1) Find the most profitable opportunities based on a common view of customers and prospects; 2) Take the best marketing action from a multitude of customers, offers and possible combinations; 3) Maximize cross-business impact and show the effect of marketing activities on overall profitability. In a webcast for marketing professionals, Steve Ashe of SAS described these three keys and showcased four analytics-based tools to achieve them: marketing automation, marketing optimization, real-time decision management, and marketing performance management. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

Nothing has generated more buzz – or brought more scrutiny – than social media, specifically how to get more value out of it.  Organizations realize social media generates awareness, but can you link it to tangible business value? If you have lots of online traffic, is that a good indicator?  No. If all you’re doing is counting hits, you’re not tracking anything that is meaningful in today’s marketplace. In a webcast co-hosted by the AMA and SAS, presenters described three areas of focus for using social media, and the five best practices for being effective in social media. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

In an October 2010 webcast, Cornell and SAS experts presented their latest findings on four critical issues that could spell the difference between an organization thriving or simply surviving. The topics include pragmatic advice for optimizing customer reward programs; survey findings about engaging with customers online; some common myths about forecasting, and creative new approaches in the hospitality field.

As Foxwoods Resort Casino expanded and diversified, management saw the need to gain a broader view of the customer and to use that information to build customer value. In a recent webcast sponsored by SAS and Netezza, Foxwoods' Todd Williams talked about how the company redefined its data warehouse environment to be able to generate a comprehensive view of the customer to improve customer service and promotions. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

Marketers at small and midsize businesses are dependent on satisfied, loyal customers. But determining how to satisfy today's highly empowered customers in the face of budget and human resource constraints is problematic, especially for small and midsize organizations facing unprecedented amounts of customer data. The good news – if harnessed properly, this data can turn into a gold mine of customer insight. This paper illustrates why shifting to analytically driven marketing strategies can significantly improve marketing effectiveness while reducing costs. It also describes how to develop and carry out a successful plan.

Loyalty and reward programs are typically designed to achieve four objectives: increase customer spending, improve retention, maintain competitive position and get new customer data. But do these programs actually achieve those aims? There’s no doubt that today’s programs yield useful customer data, but what about the other objectives? As membership in such programs continues to increase, many firms are left wondering whether their programs buy loyalty and increase customer value, or simply add costs without securing repeat patronage. That was the topic of a December 2009 Webcast sponsored by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research and SAS. This paper provides a summary of that Webcast.

This collection is part of the ANA Magazine Thought Leadership Series sponsored by SAS. The articles explore the variety of ways to use analytics to create marketing functions that are more accountable and profitable. Learn how Staples used analytics to increase campaign response rates.

This white paper highlights how SAS for Customer Experience Analytics helps organizations optimize the Web experience for their customers and analyze customer data for more effective marketing. Ultimately, you will learn how SAS for Customer Experience Analytics allows you to gain deeper customer insights, choreograph more meaningful customer interactions and improve overall marketing performance.

Marketing is about more than just campaign management, data warehousing and social media; it's really more about connecting everything that has to do with revenue. A recent AMA webinar, sponsored by SAS, examined this concept, exploring how breaking down organizational silos, encouraging and celebrating risk-taking, and recognizing every employee and customer as a potential marketer were key strategies for driving the relevance of marketing in a digital world. This paper provides a summary of that webinar.

Effective marketing is about far more than just running campaigns. It is much more than pooling marketing information into marketing databases for marketers to use. It is about connecting what marketing professionals do to the bottom line. It is possible to make that connection if companies succeed in three key ways: 1) Find the most profitable opportunities based on a common view of customers and prospects; 2) Take the best marketing action from a multitude of customers, offers and possible combinations; 3) Maximize cross-business impact and show the effect of marketing activities on overall profitability. In a webcast for marketing professionals, Steve Ashe of SAS described these three keys and showcased four analytics-based tools to achieve them: marketing automation, marketing optimization, real-time decision management, and marketing performance management. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

Nothing has generated more buzz – or brought more scrutiny – than social media, specifically how to get more value out of it.  Organizations realize social media generates awareness, but can you link it to tangible business value? If you have lots of online traffic, is that a good indicator?  No. If all you’re doing is counting hits, you’re not tracking anything that is meaningful in today’s marketplace. In a webcast co-hosted by the AMA and SAS, presenters described three areas of focus for using social media, and the five best practices for being effective in social media. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

Many providers are struggling with the increasing complexity and cost of networks, service choices and business processes. Read this white paper to learn how a customer value optimization approach can help service providers understand how customers engage with the company, identify ways to reduce churn, and systematically record customer management activities and results. You will also learn how a customer value optimization approach transformed the profit picture for a top-tier wireless carrier.

Everybody's talking about customer analytics and how they can help organizations market more effectively. But for many marketing professionals today, there's a gap between theory and execution. This paper provides managers and other marketing professionals an introduction to applying analytics to marketing to significantly improve outcomes. It explains not only why you need to make this shift to analytically driven marketing strategies and plans, but also how you get started and what kinds of tools you need to develop and execute plans.

Throw out the rule book and start over with a clean slate. The economy has slowed, regulations have increased and the way customers choose and interact with financial institutions changes quickly. Banks must go to the drawing board and genuinely re-engage with their customers. This paper reports on a comprehensive BAI study, providing an in depth overview of how to understand and engage with six valuable client segments. It includes customers' opinions on financial institutions, their level of satisfaction with their primary bank and details what financial institutions need to know about these key customer segments in order to engage with them effectively.

Although integrating with social media and networking sites and communities is a direction many companies will move toward in the next few months – if they haven’t already – e-mail marketing has definitely not lost its effectiveness. What is needed, however, are improvements in e-mail deliverability, increased effectiveness and the ability to make e-mails personal again – all while improving ROI. This paper outlines four simple steps that can be taken to improve e-mail marketing campaigns in all areas.

See an opportunity. Seize the opportunity. Do it now, while the story is still hot. Long-term campaign planning is fine and well, but if that's where you put all your focus, you will miss powerful opportunities to draft off of what's going on right now. This is according to David Meerman Scott, author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book, "Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now." This white paper includes practical, candid and irreverent advice from Scott on what it really means to be real time in marketing and PR.

Every relationship between a business and a customer is best viewed as an ongoing conversation. This white paper provides an overview of Behavior Maps, a concept unique to SAS Interaction Management that allows businesses to conduct more meaningful conversations with their customers. Key topics include the importance of context, the structure of Behavior Maps and the use of Behavior Maps to complement traditional predictive models.

This webinar conclusions paper discusses how Northern Tool + Equipment dramatically improved the quality of the company's marketing efforts by using SAS Marketing Automation to bring database management and analytics-driven campaign management in-house.

Marketing is about more than just campaign management, data warehousing and social media; it's really more about connecting everything that has to do with revenue. A recent AMA webinar, sponsored by SAS, examined this concept, exploring how breaking down organizational silos, encouraging and celebrating risk-taking, and recognizing every employee and customer as a potential marketer were key strategies for driving the relevance of marketing in a digital world. This paper provides a summary of that webinar.

The challenges of digital marketing and shifts in buyer behavior have made transformation imperative for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. To flourish, marketers need a technology solution to manage interactions, provide analytical insights and fundamentally improve performance of marketing investments. At SAS, we've encountered all the challenges that come with the new buying cycle. This white paper describes the challenges we faced and explains how we addressed them by implementing a lead management automation framework based on SAS^® Customer Intelligence solutions.

Despite a dizzying rush of fresh technological innovation, old-fashioned customer development strategies remain key determinants of success in the newest round of competition between communication services providers. This white paper explores the potential of "bundling" services in the communications industry. Specifically, it addresses the implications of bundling for the customer experience and how it can impact customer lifetime value.

Pharma firms have resisted technology-driven predictive marketing mix analysis even though those systems are being used successfully by their peers in other industries. But why? SAS and Pharmaceutical Executive commissioned Strategic Market Research to conduct confidential telephone depth interviews with senior pharma marketing executives to find out why there is a gap between the perceived need for marketing mix predictive analytics and use of the latest technology available to do that kind of analysis.

This paper details challenges that affect how communications are planned and deployed, including limiting factors such as budget caps, campaign volumes and channel capacities. Communications often can't be anticipated until a trigger-based or real-time interaction uncovers a need and the opportunity for an additional communication. Successful processes utilize the latest analytical techniques and consider a company's corporate objectives and business rules. This paper discusses a process called adaptive contact planning as a way to create more effective, and thus more profitable, marketing campaigns.

The growing obsession with customer excellence is driven, in part, by technology. Customers today can obtain and exchange more information about the good and bad of their encounters with companies than ever before. That gives companies a great incentive to work harder to make customers happy — before, during, and after their purchases. This Harvard Business Review Insight Center Report looks at how managers are turning their companies into customer-focused organizations.

This conclusions paper gives the highlights of a webinar sponsored by SAS, in which marketing science specialists from AEGON Direct Marketing Services, Inc. described how optimization has helped the organization drive higher campaign returns from existing models and resources.

Companies today have to make difficult decisions about targeting the right customers with the right offers while staying within budget and channel capacities, and without cannibalizing future sales or saturating customers with too many messages. Optimization is a process that resolves these complex issues by balancing the constraints of an organization with the need to improve results. This paper provides an introduction to marketing optimization. You will learn how optimization can help improve campaign revenues by up to 25 percent and how other companies have successfully implemented such technology. You will also learn about SAS' powerful, easy-to-use approach to marketing optimization.

With billions of dollars at stake, it is time for the pharmaceutical industry to take a cue from successful marketers in financial services, retail, hospitality and gaming. Those industries long ago embraced sales and marketing approaches based on data and advanced analytics – replacing gut feel and intuition with fact-based decisions.

This white paper describes how pharmaceutical organizations can use analytics to improve returns on marketing dollars by directing the right investments to the right targets through the most effective channel mix. 

This white paper describes the need for next best action in marketing strategies, techniques for effective implementation and how SAS Customer Intelligence can be used for such an implementation.

Today's consumer marketplace is extremely complex. Offers, advertisements and marketing messages are being sent from every possible direction. That's why making things personal with customers is no longer an option – it's a must. This white paper discusses how SAS^® Customer Intelligence solutions can help you transition to a customer-focused business strategy, which will enable you to move marketing management beyond the confines of the marketing department, ensure harmony with overall organizational strategy and give you more opportunities than ever to drive profitable revenue growth.

In a culture driven by mobility, the Internet and free choice, customers are more personal and immediate than ever, yet more elusive and disloyal than ever.  They can so easily click to buy – or to jump to the competition.  And they have more power to influence the market at large.  As a result, marketers are pressured to perform better in three Bs: Be relevant (deliver offers that are spot-on in terms of content, timing and channel); be social (capitalize on social media as both a source of inbound intelligence and outbound communication); and be real-time (take the very best action for each customer at that moment in time through the right channel). In a webcast co-hosted by the AMA and SAS, Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research and John Bastone of SAS discussed why this is so critical now, and six key ways analytics can empower marketers to succeed. This paper provides highlights of that webcast.

Although relatively new on the scene, social media has become a powerful force – growing fast in scope, audience and influence. This paper shares insights from a webinar in the AMA Marketing Effectiveness Online Seminar Series, presented in association with the American Marketing Association and SAS, in which panelists discussed how to engage customers on social media to heighten brand awareness, spread your message, drive traffic to your website, and boost search engine rankings, awareness and affinity.

This collection is part of the ANA Magazine Thought Leadership Series sponsored by SAS. The articles explore the variety of ways to use analytics to create marketing functions that are more accountable and profitable. Learn how Staples used analytics to increase campaign response rates.

It's time for managers to think about how all the social media data about their organizations can be turned into meaningful, usable information. That was the subject of a webcast in the Insights and Innovations in Hospitality and Gaming Webcast Series, co-sponsored by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research and SAS.

Marketing is about more than just campaign management, data warehousing and social media; it's really more about connecting everything that has to do with revenue. A recent AMA webinar, sponsored by SAS, examined this concept, exploring how breaking down organizational silos, encouraging and celebrating risk-taking, and recognizing every employee and customer as a potential marketer were key strategies for driving the relevance of marketing in a digital world. This paper provides a summary of that webinar.

Effective marketing is about far more than just running campaigns. It is much more than pooling marketing information into marketing databases for marketers to use. It is about connecting what marketing professionals do to the bottom line. It is possible to make that connection if companies succeed in three key ways: 1) Find the most profitable opportunities based on a common view of customers and prospects; 2) Take the best marketing action from a multitude of customers, offers and possible combinations; 3) Maximize cross-business impact and show the effect of marketing activities on overall profitability. In a webcast for marketing professionals, Steve Ashe of SAS described these three keys and showcased four analytics-based tools to achieve them: marketing automation, marketing optimization, real-time decision management, and marketing performance management. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

Nothing has generated more buzz – or brought more scrutiny – than social media, specifically how to get more value out of it.  Organizations realize social media generates awareness, but can you link it to tangible business value? If you have lots of online traffic, is that a good indicator?  No. If all you’re doing is counting hits, you’re not tracking anything that is meaningful in today’s marketplace. In a webcast co-hosted by the AMA and SAS, presenters described three areas of focus for using social media, and the five best practices for being effective in social media. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

In an October 2010 webcast, Cornell and SAS experts presented their latest findings on four critical issues that could spell the difference between an organization thriving or simply surviving. The topics include pragmatic advice for optimizing customer reward programs; survey findings about engaging with customers online; some common myths about forecasting, and creative new approaches in the hospitality field.

Social media has taken word-of-mouth and elevated it into a global conversation. Whether it's good, bad, accurate or misinformed, guest opinions are broadcast on countless social media channels for the entire world to see. Now that these conversations have moved to a public forum, hotel and casino operators have an opportunity to listen in and evaluate these opinions. But how and when should you participate? How do you design an effective social media strategy? How can an organization make sense of the volumes of unstructured text generated by these conversations? These questions were the topic of an April 2010 webcast sponsored by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research and SAS. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

See an opportunity. Seize the opportunity. Do it now, while the story is still hot. Long-term campaign planning is fine and well, but if that's where you put all your focus, you will miss powerful opportunities to draft off of what's going on right now. This is according to David Meerman Scott, author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book, "Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now." This white paper includes practical, candid and irreverent advice from Scott on what it really means to be real time in marketing and PR.

Industry experts agree that social media possess tremendous potential to drive incremental revenue. But defining a business-effective social media strategy can be challenging for retailers who may be new to the channel and a bit skeptical of its potential to deliver on key business objectives. Fortunately, advances in social media analytics offer retail companies the ability to act on intelligence gleaned from online conversations occurring across professional and consumer-generated media sites.

Today's educational leaders face an environment that requires real-time decisions and accurate, reliable and timely data in their oversight of schools. Rather than guessing or hoping for the best, leaders can use data effectively to develop and foster a culture in which all members of the district understand, apply and manage data as a dynamic entity to support the district's focus and improve outcomes for students, staffs and schools. This paper describes eight essential steps for this important transformation of a school district's culture.

To improve student achievement, educators and administrators are effectively using valuable data -- through data warehousing and business analytics -- to integrate and analyze data sources in a flexible, easy-to-manage reporting environment. This white paper describes the benefits of using data-driven decision making, as well as information and case studies on SAS onsite and hosted solutions for education.

School districts face many of the same concerns as business: how to improve performance, proactively detect problem areas, increase operational efficiency and ensure compliance with external reporting requirements. For school systems, better access to consistent and trusted data would drive better monitoring, decision-making and planning in all these areas. Starting with nearly two dozen, unrelated data sources – some of them just spreadsheets – the data team at Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in NC created a unified information infrastructure that brings together data from across the district and makes it available to users in interactive, self-service, Web-based reports. This paper summarizes a presentation made by two key leaders of this information overhaul at a Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) conference.

Schools need to embrace technology, use it efficiently, and leverage it to measure achievement. In this conclusions paper, you will read why social networking isn’t the enemy, technology need not break the school budget and how to build consensus within the community and school system for using technology. Also addressed is the critical need for school systems to develop a sophisticated, longitudinal data-driven approach to measuring student achievement.

For many years, the first instinct of most clinical programmers has always been to write SAS® code by hand, because that was the best approach available. The next innovations from SAS were tools like SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Clinical Data Integration, with their graphical user interfaces that made programming a great deal easier, faster and more efficient. This white paper discusses how experienced programmers can learn novel tricks and techniques with new tools, solutions and technology.

In an industry shaped by ever-increasing regulation, global competition and market expectations, research-based biopharmaceutical organizations need ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of drug development processes. Traditional information management practices—constrained by manual data transfer, workflow and audit procedures—are not measuring up. This white paper describes SAS® Drug Development, which provides a unified platform for bringing consistency, control and compliance to information processes, from data aggregation through analysis and reporting to FDA submission.

Sponsors and clinical research organizations (CROs) are being very cautious in their utilization of adaptive clinical trial designs. And well they should be. While under the right circumstances, clinical trials can enhance the ethical treatment of patients, enable better decisions faster and help minimize the cost of clinical development, it is important to keep in mind that adaptive trials will not always be appropriate. This paper from Elsevier Business Intelligence discusses how adaptive clinical trials can provide a better way to explore and demonstrate the efficacy and safety of investigational products, while also emphasizing the point that a trial that forgoes validity for novelty is not a good trial.

For state governments, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is creating unprecedented management challenges in reporting, transparency and accountability. To meet the President's five crucial objectives for the stimulus funding, governors, state budget officers, controllers and stimulus czars can apply a business analytics approach to managing grants; SAS for recovery optimization and management for state governments provides data integration, reporting and advanced analytics that can be quickly deployed to complement existing grants management systems with minimum disruption.

Higher education institutions, besieged with scattered student data and a lack of adequate analytical tools for complex analysis and reporting, struggle amid the constraints of narrowly defined enrollment management. A strategic and comprehensive approach to integrating all of a college or university's programs, practices, policies and planning can lead to the optimal recruitment, retention and graduation of students. To understand the factors contributing to student outcomes, recruitment, retention and graduation rates, institutions can apply analytics across the continuing student experience; in other words, aggregate and analyze the data needed to gain deeper insight into students, the quality of student experiences and external impacts on enrollment. This paper demonstrates how these insights enable a proactive, strategic approach to enrollment management.

This white paper describes how corporate executives can maintain, or regain, confidence in financial reporting by using SAS Financial Management which redefines the cycle times, performance and possibilities of financial management and reporting, and provides financial intelligence throughout the enterprise.

Driven by regulation, restructuring, increased accountability and shareholder scrutiny, the CFO has become a key strategic decision maker who helps set company strategy. This white paper argues that financial professionals must do more than report on the past; they must interpret past results for their impact on the current business environment and affect on the future. The paper also discusses how SAS can help CFOs address key challenges as they adapt to their changing role.

The Fast Close process – the ability to rapidly close the books, collect, consolidate and publish the results of a group globally – is widely seen as a proxy for good corporate governance. This white paper, written by FSN Publications, considers the common impediments to a Fast Close process, the principle steps needed to correct them and illustrates how SAS Financial Management, coupled with other SAS solutions respond to these challenges.

As a valuable costing methodology, this paper looks at how ABC has evolved over its life cycle, what lessons have been learned from its evolution and what ABC can do today that it could not do 20 years ago. It also describes the current state of ABC as a key input and value adder to performance management systems.

Shared services departments in organizations have traditionally been called "overhead functions." Today, shared services are being defined as the sharing and leveraging of resources, people and information to more effectively meet the business needs of an organization. In order to transform overhead functions into more than merely cost-effective internal suppliers, fact-based information, such as that provided by activity-based cost management, is required. This white paper gives an overview of the shared services model, focusing on activity-based cost management as an enabler. The paper also includes a primer on activity-based management and some ground rules for effective shared services.

It is no longer sufficient for an organization to be lean, agile and efficient. Its entire supply chain must also perform as the company itself does. If some customers are excessively high-maintenance, they erode profit margins. Who are these troublesome customers, and how much do they drag down profits? Once you know, what corrective actions should you take? This detailed white paper explores the value of activity-based cost management (ABC/M) in determining customer profitability. It describes the insights gained from validly measuring customer profitability and how organizations apply performance management systems to manage changing strategies for increasing profit, reducing cost and improving performance throughout the enterprise.

Instead of just calculating and reporting a number for compliance, organizations must go beyond calculation into activity modeling if real understanding, leadership and goals are to be achieved. Learn about the differences between calculating and modeling emissions, the critical parallels between cost and greenhouse gas accounting, collecting and managing data, and using activity-based modeling to gain invaluable insight to calculate and set reduction goals of your carbon footprint.

While it is essential to employ customer-centric strategies to improve revenue, it is also necessary to balance customer needs with shareholder value. This white paper outlines a method for achieving this balance by tying retention spending to customer financial value. You will learn how to evaluate customers by combining financial value with loyalty, and about requirements for a properly customer-focused strategy.

The economic crisis confronting governments is forcing a revisiting of traditional budget formulation in order to achieve maximum results from reduced resources; however, existing budgeting tools and processes are outdated and incapable of providing the information needed for proper evaluation of government programs. Learn how a program-centric approach to evaluating outcomes and predicting future outcomes must become the norm for future government programs in order to set priorities, provide needed services and prioritize investment of government resources.

This white paper describes how corporate executives can maintain, or regain, confidence in financial reporting by using SAS Financial Management which redefines the cycle times, performance and possibilities of financial management and reporting, and provides financial intelligence throughout the enterprise.

The impact of fraud, waste and abuse on payers, whether insurance companies, government agencies, or self-insured employers, is enormous.  The time is right for health payers to invest in technology to prevent claims fraud and abuse and stem the current epidemic of financial losses.  This white paper discusses how technology-based tools to fight insurance fraud can be used individually or in combination to help companies detect and prevent abusive or criminal claim activities and how fraud-detection techniques can be powerful deterrents for would-be fraudsters who seek to profit at the expense of insurance companies and their honest business partners and customers.

Read this white paper to learn how SAS helps governments reduce the taxpayer burden for fraud, error and abuse, ultimately allowing governments to better fund efforts for improving the lives of citizens. This paper focuses on three key areas: improper payments, purchase card fraud and Medicare/Medicaid fraud. The paper discusses how governments can develop anti-fraud strategies to improve collection rates and reduce improper payments, fraud, waste and abuse.

Enterprise case management is garnering much attention for its potential to combine intelligence from disparate systems into a single repository to more effectively prevent losses, meet regulatory compliance mandates and reduce costs. This white paper discusses enterprise case management and explores how SAS Enterprise Case Management significantly reduces the time and effort of investigating fraud and resolving customer service cases.

Health care organizations are struggling to keep pace with the rising volume of cases they must manage, and enterprise case management is garnering much attention for its potential to combine intelligence from disparate systems and departments into a unified solution for more effectively preventing losses, meeting regulatory compliance mandates, reducing costs and improving communication/collaboration. But to be effective in case management, it is necessary to identify and address some of the common pitfalls that organizations encounter. This white paper discusses how SAS Enterprise Case Management mitigates these obstacles by addressing them both through technology and business processes.

Organizations that respond to regulatory pressures by simply documenting existing fraud management practices are selling themselves short. This is the opportunity to turn the tide on fraud, fighting back with powerful analytics, holistic intelligence and integrated case management. This white paper shows why it's so important to take an integrated, enterprisewide approach to fraud management that spans all contact channels and account types. With a best-practice approach encompassing data analysis and alert generation, alert management, and case management, businesses can avoid fraud, stop losses and save significant amounts of time and money.

Government agencies are particularly susceptible to misappropriation of funds. Billions of dollars can be siphoned away from worthy programs due to process deficiencies, lack of transparency or outright fraud. This executive overview outlines five steps to identifying and preventing fraud, waste and abuse. These steps focus on gaining deeper insights into existing records of program activities and financial data.

Despite improved security, fraud is still a major concern in the banking industry. This is due to elaborate cybercrimes like international money mule operations as well as the use of new mobile devices like smartphones. The growth in cybercrime – encompassing mobile, online and ACH transactions – puts analytics front and center at helping banks stay ahead of fraudsters. This paper illustrates why using multiple analytical approaches across all organizational transactions helps banks achieve better monitoring of fraudulent activities and more accurate customer behavior profiles. As a result, banks can keep customers safe from financial harm while protecting their own reputations.

It's no secret: fraud drains profits, and lax fraud management practices put a company at a competitive disadvantage. Unfortunately, there is no one bulletproof fraud-detection technique. However, multiple techniques working in concert can be very effective for detecting both opportunistic and professional/organized fraud. This paper briefly traces the evolution of fraud detection approaches, and closely examines eight techniques that insurers should include in their arsenal of anti-fraud strategies.

Globally manufacturers spend more than $70 billion to cover warranty expenses each year, but that is only the beginning of the true costs associated with poor product quality and suspect warranty claims. Increased government scrutiny, tarnished brand image, reduced stock prices, dissatisfied customers and lost sales can quickly dwarf the direct monetary losses. To reduce claim costs and increase customer satisfaction, forward-thinking manufacturers are applying automated analytics across the warranty chain. Detecting and preventing fraud, finding emerging quality problems sooner and accelerating the problem-solving process can reduce warranty costs by more than 20 percent while keeping customers happy. This paper shows how some companies are applying analytics at multiple points across the warranty timeline and the results they have achieved in both issue and fraud detection.

With limited resources, rising costs and an expanded need for services and health coverage for the uninsured,  the pressure is on to accurately forecast publically funded medical costs. Improper forecasting can result in unbalanced budgets or state programs such as education or public safety being denied needed funding.  This paper describes how intelligent forecasting can aid in the development of accurate and effective healthcare budgets.

Security analysts, inundated with masses of unconnected and uncorrelated data and fragmented government IT infrastructures, are calling for tools and processes that can correlate data, provide analysis and warning capabilities and improve cybersituational awareness. This paper describes how cyber-analytics gives government agencies enhanced and complementary capabilities and situational awareness about the security of their systems, networks and enterprise by monitoring activities uncovering vulnerabilities, threats and patterns integrating disparate data and predicting future threats and attacks. 

Read this white paper to learn how SAS helps governments reduce the taxpayer burden for fraud, error and abuse, ultimately allowing governments to better fund efforts for improving the lives of citizens. This paper focuses on three key areas: improper payments, purchase card fraud and Medicare/Medicaid fraud. The paper discusses how governments can develop anti-fraud strategies to improve collection rates and reduce improper payments, fraud, waste and abuse.

Healthcare fraud schemes by organized crime networks' are underway today, flying under the radar of law enforcement. By examining the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian crime ring – an operation that eluded detection by federal payers and New York Insurance carriers for over 10 years – this paper explores how law enforcement or government agencies can proactively identify complex fraud schemes in their infancy using a multi-faceted, anti-fraud detection approach that combines sophisticated data integration with hybrid analytics.

Analysis of microarray data is used extensively to search for and discover clues to the molecular causes of important biological phenomena. As microarrays increase in popularity, the demand has grown for biologist-friendly applications that simplify the quality-control and analysis processes and present useful graphical representations of high-dimensional data sets. Expression Console, recently introduced by Affymetrix, provides a simple interface for normalization and summarization of data from Affymetrix CEL files to produce CHP files for further analysis. This paper explains how the Affymetrix Expression CHP Wizard in JMP Genomics automates many steps in a comprehensive microarray analysis workflow by combining an interactive interface with standard JMP Genomics tools.

Exon analysis is a powerful complement to traditional 3’ expression analysis, providing new opportunities to identify biologically relevant splicing patterns. Alternative splicing is already known to play a role in guiding developmental processes such as tissue differentiation (3), and changes in alternative splicing patterns have been associated with cancer and other diseases. As next-generation sequencing technologies expand in popularity, knowledge of common and rare alternative splicing events is likely to expand greatly, further increasing the size and complexity of these data sets. JMP Genomics meets this challenge with intelligent filtering capabilities to reduce large data sets to reliable results, and powerful analytics capable of distinguishing statistically relevant exon-level and transcript-level changes using any platform that may detect alternative splice events.

Release 3.1 of JMP Genomics software from SAS adds specific menu items for copy number analysis. In this white paper, we will review a simple JMP Genomics workflow to determine differences in copy number or B-allele frequencies. These workflows have been tested on Illumina DNA Analysis BeadChips, including the Human1M DNA Analysis BeadChips.

Statistical methods and software available for identifying common and rare copy number variations (CNVs) are still evolving. Here, tools in JMP Genomics 4.1 were used to find shared regions of CNV and correlate SNP intensities with gene expression differences. A similar approach can be applied to examine pairwise correlations between other genomic measures.

This paper offers a case study that illustrates the importance of integrating the elements of GRC using a detailed example involving key indicators covering performance, risk and controls. The case study will focus governance-related business pains, their causes and how an enterprise GRC solution addresses them.

Instead of just calculating and reporting a number for compliance, organizations must go beyond calculation into activity modeling if real understanding, leadership and goals are to be achieved. Learn about the differences between calculating and modeling emissions, the critical parallels between cost and greenhouse gas accounting, collecting and managing data, and using activity-based modeling to gain invaluable insight to calculate and set reduction goals of your carbon footprint.

Failure to protect customer information, corporate confidential data and disclosure of other non-public information can prove disastrous to a company's reputation, not to mention severe financial consequences for the institution and its insurers. This white paper examines how an Enterprise GRC solution can address this potentially devastating exposure.

Current economic conditions heighten the need for financial services firms to accurately gauge required levels of regulatory compliance and economic capital to support business strategy and risk appetite. More regulations are on the way, demanding transparency, accurate information about company operations, robust and comprehensive risk management, regulatory compliance and efficient governance. What does this mean for many organizations? This paper takes a step back to examine how all components of a successful company must work in an integrated manner in order to produce the best results, and how SAS approaches governance, risk, compliance and performance management issues by providing a comprehensive framework for analyzing and managing risks in the context of corporate strategy and performance.

Current economic conditions heighten the need for government to accurately gauge regulatory compliance and capital to support business strategy and risk appetite. More regulations are on the way, demanding transparency, accurate information about government operations, robust and comprehensive risk management, regulatory compliance and efficient governance. What does this mean for government organizations? This paper takes a step back to examine how all components of government must work in an integrated manner in order to produce the best results, and how SAS approaches governance, risk, compliance and performance management issues by providing a comprehensive framework for analyzing and managing risks in the context of government strategy and performance.

Financial institutions are finding it necessary to strengthen their anti-money laundering (AML) platforms to stem the tide of illicit financial transactions and meet new regulatory mandates. For enterprises with moderate to high risk exposures, this calls for a rigorous automated system based on dynamic risk assessment. This white paper discusses how SAS Anti-Money Laundering enables institutions to create an enterprisewide view of customer relationships and risks, monitor activity using multiple detection methods, adapt that monitoring as appropriate for each customer's risk classification, investigate and document suspicious cases, and produce required regulatory reports – all within an integrated solution built on award-winning SAS data management and analytic capabilities.

This white paper discusses the nature of business risk, from credit risk to market risk and operational risk, primarily in the context of the banking industry. The paper provides a history of the Basel accords, outlining in detail the implications of Basel II on risk management. You will also learn about the processes and systems  required for implementing internal ratings-based approaches to risk management.

This paper describes how an Enterprise GRC solution can address the key challenges compliance teams face – leading compliance initiatives to ensure organizations stay compliant with emerging regulations, improving efficiency of their teams by optimizing compliance processes and costs and improving effectiveness by automating compliance processes and increasing collaboration with risk management and internal audit teams.

The federal government has enacted laws and standards making discrimination in lending illegal. To help financial lenders improve the accuracy of their disparate treatment testing evaluations, SAS has developed a methodology called the Dynamic-Conditional Process (DCP). This methodology dynamically classifies lending decision factors and captures variations in policy thresholds among loan products, markets and/or programs. Read this white paper for an introduction to the DCP methodology.

Solvency II is set to come into effect on January 1, 2014, but there has been a recent proposal to extend the deadline for Solvency II compliance by one year based on the UK's Financial Services Authority findings that many insurers have a lot to do before they reach the Solvency II standards. SAS sees the proposed extension as an opportunity to take a structured approach to the Solvency II transformation project. In this paper, SAS shares its insight into the challenges insurers are facing in the countdown to Solvency II and outlines the SAS® solutions that can help them to prepare.

To survive and emerge stronger from the current financial crisis, it is essential that insurance companies implement an enterprise risk management strategy. And for any ERM project to be successful, it must be fundamentally linked to a holistic, unified approach to data management - one that ensures a smooth flow of information throughout the organization. This white paper discusses how using SAS for data management enables decision makers at all levels to see a complete picture of enterprise risk.

For its 8th annual Health Care & Life Sciences Executive Conference, SAS brought together great minds from across the industry – provider, pharma, payer and policy segments – to discuss the promise of data and analytics in improving medical decisions, costs and outcomes, particularly as the industry is being reshaped in the U.S. by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This paper summarizes the Executive Leadership Panel Discussion, which offered insights from various industry perspectives: government, the research and provider communities, and health care IT.

To support alignment and drive cultural change (including accountability and collaboration) in government, SAS recommends three key steps in this paper: 1) See it: Get an integrated, organizationwide view of all factors related to performance 2) Manage it: Align resources, strategy, finances, programs/initiatives and activities to support the agency's mission 3) Improve it: Drive results with intelligence, collaboration and accountability.

How can the chief human capital officer optimize the work force in alignment with organizational goals? This paper discusses how aligning goals is possible, as well as addressing workforce demands at every stage of the talent life cycle, mitigating workforce risks, proactively responding to changing workforce trends and demographics, planning for mergers, acquisitions and downsizing, and synchronizing financial and operational workforce strategies.

Government agencies are facing a human capital crisis where CHCOs and managers will need to be more strategic and gain a more holistic view of the work force to support the agency mission. This paper presents how to align the human capital strategy with organizational goals, address workforce demands, mitigate workforce risks, proactively respond to changing workforce demographics, plan for change, and synchronize financial and operational workforce strategies. 

Labor costs represent one of the largest operational expenditures in hospitality and gaming. At the same time, labor can be one of a property’s biggest competitive differentiators—or its worst liability. As economic pressures persist, strategies aimed at hiring the right skill set and efficiently deploying labor resources have become critical to reducing costs while maintaining service levels. That was the topic of a November 2009 Webcast sponsored by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research and SAS. This paper provides a summary of that Webcast.

Labor costs represent one of the largest operational expenditures in hospitality and gaming. At the same time, labor can be one of a property’s biggest competitive differentiators—or its worst liability. As economic pressures persist, strategies aimed at hiring the right skill set and efficiently deploying labor resources have become critical to reducing costs while maintaining service levels. That was the topic of a November 2009 Webcast sponsored by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research and SAS. This paper provides a summary of that Webcast.

Labor costs represent one of the largest operational expenditures in hospitality and gaming. At the same time, labor can be one of a property’s biggest competitive differentiators—or its worst liability. As economic pressures persist, strategies aimed at hiring the right skill set and efficiently deploying labor resources have become critical to reducing costs while maintaining service levels. That was the topic of a November 2009 Webcast sponsored by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research and SAS. This paper provides a summary of that Webcast.

This paper explores the concepts of Information Management, including the challenges and importance of effectively managing ALL data whether it is structured, unstructured or semi-structured. It discusses the evolution of information management and outlines the SAS approach for a coherent IM strategy, which includes implementing a business intelligence competency center and the use of a comprehensive, integrated software platform.

As demand grew for more flexible and accessible reporting at the nation's second-largest university, the Institutional Research team found itself spending an undue amount of time assembling data from dispersed sources (if it was even possible) and doing custom programming to respond to special requests.

To give users better access to information – and self-service reporting with sort/filter/drill/export capabilities – UCF converted legacy PDF and Excel reports into new Web-based reports using SAS® data integration and business intelligence tools. Full-time staff members now have secure, online access to a suite of user-friendly, interactive reports for on-demand access to current and historical information about enrollment and degrees.

This paper summarizes presentations made by the leaders of this reporting initiative at the May 2011 Association for the Institutional Research (AIR) Forum.

Using IT systems that fragment data across the organization, require manual data collection and offer limited reporting and analytics, institutional research (IR) departments cannot deliver what key decision makers need. This paper shows the best practices of the IR department of the University of Central Florida where SAS was used to integrate data sources, create a single source of trusted data, elevate the sophistication and timeliness of the reporting and analysis delivered, and empower business users with self-service tools to deliver a new level of value to internal customers.

While IT has gotten good at collecting and storing information, business today demands that we make better use of data – turning it into a business asset to make proactive business decisions. This white paper examines the challenges organizations face in managing information as an asset and explores strategies that use business technology to integrate data across the entire organization for better decision making.

Is your IT organization like the proverbial cobbler's children -- responsible for implementing and maintaining business intelligence for the enterprise but seldom applying the same technology and resources to the business of IT? One issue exacerbating this problem is the ever-present silos of data. Without the ability to link diverse infrastructure assets into business planning, service-level expectations and financial results, IT organizations cannot help but operate within a narrowed scope. Without the ability to extract, transform and load infrastructure data on an enterprise scale and apply predictive analytics, insights into the operational effectiveness of IT will be limited. This white paper examines SAS IT Intelligence solutions that can help your IT organization track usage, availability, response times and throughput against business needs, thereby calculating the true costs of delivering IT services.

The massive growth in IT over the past decade has changed the role of the CIO to one of managing IT as a business by proving the value of IT across the organization, ensuring customer satisfaction and maximizing value from new and existing investments. Fulfilling this new role requires focus, vision and, above all, transparency: into services, costs, demand, processes and impact on corporate performance. This white paper discusses how IT business performance allows IT to change the focus from technology and production to customers and services, thus enabling IT to become service-oriented and align itself with the organization to provide customer-driven solutions to business problems.

Written by Computerworld and sponsored by SAS, this technology brief explores sustainability as a driver for business innovation and the positive role that information technology can play. Compiled from custom research and interviews with SAS, topics include green-sizing the data center, data integration for sustainability and how IT executives can leverage sustainability to drive business innovation.

Is your IT organization like the proverbial cobbler's children -- responsible for implementing and maintaining business intelligence for the enterprise but seldom applying the same technology and resources to the business of IT? One issue exacerbating this problem is the ever-present silos of data. Without the ability to link diverse infrastructure assets into business planning, service-level expectations and financial results, IT organizations cannot help but operate within a narrowed scope. Without the ability to extract, transform and load infrastructure data on an enterprise scale and apply predictive analytics, insights into the operational effectiveness of IT will be limited. This white paper examines SAS IT Intelligence solutions that can help your IT organization track usage, availability, response times and throughput against business needs, thereby calculating the true costs of delivering IT services.

Retailers are commonly faced with the challenge of forecasting demand for items that are sold only at certain times of the year, but in high volumes. This paper suggests a compression approach for dealing with these kinds of highly seasonal forecasts using SAS software, which could produce more accurate results than forecasts based on standard time series modeling. It provides an illustrative example based on real-life data. 

In this webcast summary, experts identify three major trends in pricing: A shift from inventory optimization to price optimization; the growing importance of distribution channel management; a move toward dynamic, customer-centric pricing. Learn more about these trends and nine best practices for improving revenue management using analytics to make better decisions.

Everybody's talking about customer analytics and how they can help organizations market more effectively. But for many marketing professionals today, there's a gap between theory and execution. This paper provides managers and other marketing professionals an introduction to applying analytics to marketing to significantly improve outcomes. It explains not only why you need to make this shift to analytically driven marketing strategies and plans, but also how you get started and what kinds of tools you need to develop and execute plans.

In this webcast summary, experts identify three major trends in pricing: A shift from inventory optimization to price optimization; the growing importance of distribution channel management; a move toward dynamic, customer-centric pricing. Learn more about these trends and nine best practices for improving revenue management using analytics to make better decisions.

Service organizations an increasingly important source of revenue for many companies. For these organizations, better methods for forecasting warranty reserves and accruals mean greater efficiency and profitability. This paper outlines some of the pitfalls of traditional methods for allocating warranty reserves, the best practices that can transform the process, and the significant monetary gains that can be achieved by improving the accuracy and adaptability of warranty reserve forecasts.

Natural resources agencies in the Americas must understand how to enhance the effectiveness of programs and policies while maintaining an adequate level of funding. This white paper describes how analytics can provide optimized solutions to these challenges. The paper first describes the use of analytics in resource management, education and CRM, operations and performance management. Ultimately, you will learn about SAS' analytic capabilities for natural resource agencies.

The women's specialty retailer, Chico's FAS Inc., needed to gain a more holistic view of its middle- to high-income clientele, but the company was operating with a fixed data model that didn't adapt well to a changing environment. Data was sent out for modeling, so the results were often stale by the time campaigns were developed. This paper summarizes an event in the "Applying Business Analytics Webinar Series," in which the company's director of CRM and enterprise information management describes how Chico's has benefited from a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for customer and campaign management. With its SaaS solution, Chico's can create timely, personalized offers, and has dramatically reduced the time needed to produce campaigns.

With its promise to deliver better business models and services quickly and cheaply, cloud computing could be the next major driver of business innovation across all industries. In a recent analyst survey, more than 2,000 CIOs identified cloud computing and virtualization as the top-two technology priorities for 2011. This white paper provides summary concepts within the paradigm of cloud computing and "as-a-service" delivery models, focusing on different options and what SAS offers. Because virtualization enables the creation of flexible clouds with elastic computing resources, this paper presents a high-level overview of that technology. Other elements needed for successful cloud computing, such as security, data management, scalability and policy-based compliancy, are also addressed. Finally, the paper provides customer case studies that illustrate how the power of SAS® Analytics can be delivered using a variety of cloud environments and the benefits that have been achieved.

Until now, most companies have found it difficult to deliver the reliable, accurate and near real-time insight required to support critical decisions. This paper explains how you can use in-database analytics to not only accelerate your time to insight, but also gain greater confidence in the accuracy of your decisions and maintain the security and integrity of your data.

As Foxwoods Resort Casino expanded and diversified, management saw the need to gain a broader view of the customer and to use that information to build customer value. In a recent webcast sponsored by SAS and Netezza, Foxwoods' Todd Williams talked about how the company redefined its data warehouse environment to be able to generate a comprehensive view of the customer to improve customer service and promotions. This paper provides a summary of that webcast.

The economic crisis confronting governments is forcing a revisiting of traditional budget formulation in order to achieve maximum results from reduced resources; however, existing budgeting tools and processes are outdated and incapable of providing the information needed for proper evaluation of government programs. Learn how a program-centric approach to evaluating outcomes and predicting future outcomes must become the norm for future government programs in order to set priorities, provide needed services and prioritize investment of government resources.

To support alignment and drive cultural change (including accountability and collaboration) in government, SAS recommends three key steps in this paper: 1) See it: Get an integrated, organizationwide view of all factors related to performance 2) Manage it: Align resources, strategy, finances, programs/initiatives and activities to support the agency's mission 3) Improve it: Drive results with intelligence, collaboration and accountability.

This white paper provides five steps to resource optimization, with a visual model and a variety of real-world examples to help business leaders understand how to allocate resources in alignment with enterprise-level objectives. You'll also learn about the technology required to support resource optimization.

The batch-mode mindset of annual budgets, quarterly forecasts and monthly reports hit a real-time speed bump during 2008, revealing its shortcomings. This Webcast summary offers ways to move your business to the real-time status necessary when risk and volatility are standard operating conditions; when the extraordinary is now the ordinary.

In an effort to provide better, cost-effective care, health care providers are increasingly turning to IT-enabled business strategies. This white paper by Health Industry Insights, an IDC company, and sponsored by SAS presents the findings and analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with nine senior executives and system architects at three prestigious teaching hospitals acknowledged to be industry leaders in their use of health information technology, in general, and BI applications, in particular.

Like most small school districts, the Coronado Unified School District has separate transactional systems – some of them just spreadsheets – for transportation, food service, instructional resources, student information, payroll, human resources, accounting and budgeting.

These transactional systems each report on their respective areas, but questions that come to the finance department span multiple areas – and the volume of inquiries and reporting requirements keeps growing. Finance staff spent a lot of time adding and comparing paper reports from various systems to answer even simple questions.

At the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) Conference 2011, the assistant superintendent of business services described how her district is bringing these systems together with SAS® for Performance Management to improve accountability, transparency and trust.

Healthcare leaders are challenged to improve care delivery, reduce costs and enhance physician and employee engagement. Doing so requires the ability to access data from a variety of siloed and disparate systems, and then to get that data into the hands of those closest to the issues. Applying business intelligence in a healthcare setting is a powerful way to break down political barriers, overcome resistance to change, align strategic priorities and improve communication. This white paper explores the ways that business intelligence and performance management software systems can facilitate evidence-based healthcare delivery in hospitals. The paper provides background on implementing business intelligence and then offers case studies demonstrating successful BI at several prominent hospitals.

The amount of information in business is growing exponentially. This white paper shows how the dashboarding and scorecarding capabilities of SAS Strategic Performance Management can help you maximize the value of this information. The paper describes the progression through focus, alignment and agility that SAS facilitates using advanced data access, alerts and traffic lighting, and dynamic diagramming functions.

Effective performance management integrates an enterprisewide framework of associated methodologies and supporting software. In this paper published by Manufacturing Business Technology ("Alert"), the value and benefits of integrated performance management throughout the manufacturing organization is explored, along with the roles of predictive modeling and analytics to operate a circulatory and simultaneous system for proactive decision support and planning.

Integrating data elements across a city or county government gives officials the information needed to support knowledge-based decisions – providing a visualization of how all of the pieces within a community fit together. With a holistic view of a community enabled through analytics, officials can understand what happened, why, and know with certainty what actions to take for tomorrow.

For HHS programs, this paper explains the benefits of a provider-centric view that integrates and analyzes all of the information on provider-patient interaction. This holistic view provides the opportunity to be proactive in cost avoidance and quality of care, and to become more efficient with processes across a host of subject areas inside HHS programs. Moreover, it lays the foundation for continual improvement of patient health outcomes through enhanced care management practices.

Now more than ever before, government agencies must do more with less. This white paper explores the ways implementing performance management techniques can help create a corporate culture that promotes transparency, creates accountability and monitors results. It also describes how pairing performance management with analytics empowers agencies to be proactive, to plan based on facts and perform more like a business by being accountable with taxpayers' money.

Whether companies stick with their core competencies or strike out into new territory, they can increase the odds that they will successfully navigate the recession by improving decision-making. Getting ahead in a recession by making better decisions is an Economist Intelligence Unit report sponsored by SAS. It is the first paper in a three-part series entitled Management Magnified, aimed at helping managers find ways to guide their companies more effectively through troubled times. This paper examines how the principles of good decision making - being proactive, ensuring that decisions are made at the appropriate level in the organization and basing them on the best information available - can reduce risk and help companies to turn current challenges into future opportunities.

It is no longer sufficient for an organization to be lean, agile and efficient. Its entire supply chain must also perform as the company itself does. If some customers are excessively high-maintenance, they erode profit margins. Who are these troublesome customers, and how much do they drag down profits? Once you know, what corrective actions should you take? This detailed white paper explores the value of activity-based cost management (ABC/M) in determining customer profitability. It describes the insights gained from validly measuring customer profitability and how organizations apply performance management systems to manage changing strategies for increasing profit, reducing cost and improving performance throughout the enterprise.

Instead of just calculating and reporting a number for compliance, organizations must go beyond calculation into activity modeling if real understanding, leadership and goals are to be achieved. Learn about the differences between calculating and modeling emissions, the critical parallels between cost and greenhouse gas accounting, collecting and managing data, and using activity-based modeling to gain invaluable insight to calculate and set reduction goals of your carbon footprint.

This white paper describes a powerful and economical managerial accounting system that collects and transforms data at the detailed transaction level. You will learn about the structure and benefits of such a system, including its ability to scale to accommodate billions of transactions, access data from diverse sources, allow remote Web-enabled analysis and report profits at a moment's notice.

Insurance companies are striving to turn their focus from policies and products to customers. However, to an insurer the customer can come in many disguises – the insured, the policyholder, and the agent or broker. Add the Internet and other direct distribution channels, and insurers are finding it harder and harder to determine who and what is profitable. This white paper discusses how integrating analytics into performance management can enable organizations to measure the profitability of their customers, agencies and multiple distribution channels.

As in other sectors of the economy, the insurance industry has experienced many changes in information technology. Advances in hardware, software, and networks have offered benefits, such as reduced costs and time of data processing as well as increased potential for profit. Competition has also increased, making effective IT solutions even more necessary.

This paper discusses how insurance companies can benefit from modern data mining methodologies, which help companies reduce costs, increase profits, retain current customers, acquire new customers, and develop new products. You will learn about how to implement data mining projects and about changes in U.S. legislation that affect insurance firms. A list of recommended reading is also included.

A global survey of 334 executives from around the world in March 2009 by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of SAS reveals that only one-third of respondents think that risk management principles in financial services remain sound, and more than half surveyed say that they have conducted, or plan to conduct, a thorough overhaul of their risk management practices. Read this paper to learn more about implications for how financial organizations are approaching risk management as a result of the financial crisis.

Data management is a critical component of any enterprise risk management (ERM) system. A bank's approach to data management should be holistic and unified, with a platform that is scalable, open and capable of supporting the needs of multiple risk management functions. This white paper discusses the various components required for successful ERM and explores their cumulative benefits as part of a unified structure.

The recent turbulence in financial markets has made risk management an increasingly critical part of the decision-making process in financial institutions. An integrated approach to risk management is crucial for enabling organizations to consolidate exposures, measure risk and perform stress tests across all lines of business. This white paper discusses in depth the ability of SAS Risk Management for Banking to provide integrated risk management capabilities across your entire enterprise.

There's a growing recognition that data is not just a technology issue, but a critical corporate asset that must be driven by the needs of the business. As such, it has become a key topic for discussion among both the executive and non-executive board, and it plays a key role in effective enterprise risk management. This white paper discusses how, by asking the right questions at the right time, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their institutions' data, and helping to prioritize investments and initiatives, boards can play a vital role in raising the quality of data and, by extension, their own decision making.

To survive and emerge stronger from the current financial crisis, it is essential that insurance companies implement an enterprise risk management strategy. And for any ERM project to be successful, it must be fundamentally linked to a holistic, unified approach to data management - one that ensures a smooth flow of information throughout the organization. This white paper discusses how using SAS for data management enables decision makers at all levels to see a complete picture of enterprise risk.

As banks increasingly look to best-of-breed, third-party solutions for their risk management and independent derivatives valuation needs, SAS and FINCAD have partnered to offer a joint solution to address these needs. Following this best-of-breed approach can save a bank significant time and costs over developing the systems in-house. This white paper discusses the joint solution from SAS and FINCAD – an enterprise risk management system with independent derivatives valuations – and how the solution enables banks to develop effective risk policies that are designed to continuously manage a firm's risk-and-return profile and the capital required for long-term success.

As a result of the recent market shocks, banks, capital markets firms and asset managers are rethinking certain issues and focusing on: 1) How to integrate not only risk and reward tradeoffs using portfolio theory, but also how to plan for market shocks; 2) The resulting impact of these shocks on the business and its divisions. Leading financial entities are linking their portfolio risk with the return on capital and integrating market liquidity into their analyses in an attempt to gain a more complete view of risk and return. As a result, optimization of capital deployed – rather than just a single view of risk exposures – has become the new role of risk management. This white paper proposes a new framework for optimizing risk management and discusses the technology needed to establish a high-performance computing environment for risk management.

Anticipated regulatory changes will demand more transparency from capital markets firms. They can deliver this transparency and accountability more readily and gain a competitive advantage by creating a model and scenario library linking the front office, middle office and risk management teams. This paper outlines an approach for creating a common model, security and scenario library for modeling structured, fixed-income securities and equities for use by front office, middle office and risk management teams.

The integration of risk and finance as part of the budgeting process is not a matter of "if it will be required," but "when the regulators will mandate it" as part of their ongoing review process. This paper describes a bank's typical budgeting and planning process and offers some insights into how the risk and finance functions can be integrated into this process.

As global markets mature, institutions recognize that risks are intertwined with performance and should be measured in an integrated manner. This white paper provides an explanation of enterprise risk management (ERM), describing both the reasons for managing risk and the components necessary to do it successfully. These components include the ability to communicate risk measures throughout the organization, establish effective diagnostic techniques and effectively allocate risk capital.

Current economic conditions heighten the need for financial services firms to accurately gauge required levels of regulatory compliance and economic capital to support business strategy and risk appetite. More regulations are on the way, demanding transparency, accurate information about company operations, robust and comprehensive risk management, regulatory compliance and efficient governance. What does this mean for many organizations? This paper takes a step back to examine how all components of a successful company must work in an integrated manner in order to produce the best results, and how SAS approaches governance, risk, compliance and performance management issues by providing a comprehensive framework for analyzing and managing risks in the context of corporate strategy and performance.

A wave of regulatory reform is forcing banks to revisit the technology used to measure and manage risk. This presents an opportunity to develop IT capabilities that provide a more nuanced view of how and where banks utilize their financial resources. This paper, written jointly by SAS and Boston Consulting Group, examines this issue in the context of a framework and process designed to help banks improve their risk-IT architectures.

The global financial crisis highlighted major shortcomings in liquidity risk management. As a result, liquidity risk management has entered a new era aimed at ensuring that future liquidity shortages will be less severe and that when shortages do occur, firms will be in a better position to cope. This white paper outlines the failings of liquidity risk management and summarizes the solutions recommended by the industry and the official sector. It then goes on to explain how those solutions can be developed and implemented using the full power of business analytics.

As a result of the recent market shocks, banks, capital markets firms and asset managers are rethinking certain issues and focusing on: 1) How to integrate not only risk and reward tradeoffs using portfolio theory, but also how to plan for market shocks; 2) The resulting impact of these shocks on the business and its divisions. Leading financial entities are linking their portfolio risk with the return on capital and integrating market liquidity into their analyses in an attempt to gain a more complete view of risk and return. As a result, optimization of capital deployed – rather than just a single view of risk exposures – has become the new role of risk management. This white paper proposes a new framework for optimizing risk management and discusses the technology needed to establish a high-performance computing environment for risk management.

Developed by SAS, the Comprehensive Credit Assessment Framework (CCAF), is a unique rating system that extends existing credit scoring to embrace all relevant factors and business context so that lenders can classify credit risk and decide all transactions in a more effective, transparent and forward-looking manner. CCAF's systematic segmentation approach has implications for both intervening in the mortgage crisis and preventing future financial disruption.

This paper illlustrates how Credit Scoring for SAS Enterprise Miner software is used to build credit scoring models for the retail credit industry. It discusses the benefits of performing credit scoring and the advantages of building credit scoring models in-house using SAS Enterprise Miner. It goes on to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of three important model types: the scorecard, the decision tree and the neural network. Finally, it presents a case study where an application scoring model is built with SAS Enterprise Miner, beginning with reading the development sample, through classing and selecting characteristics, fitting a regression model, calculating score points, assessing scorecard quality (in comparison to a decision tree model built on the same sample) and going through a reject inference process to arrive at a model for scoring the new customer applicant population.

This white paper discusses the nature of business risk, from credit risk to market risk and operational risk, primarily in the context of the banking industry. The paper provides a history of the Basel accords, outlining in detail the implications of Basel II on risk management. You will also learn about the processes and systems  required for implementing internal ratings-based approaches to risk management.

Financial institutions face many challenges due to recent Basel III-related changes in the area of counterparty exposure measurement and management. This white paper puts in perspective the counterparty exposure management processes that banks need to implement to address the new Basel III regulations. It also illustrates how SAS has responded to Basel III-related challenges through an integrated risk offering – SAS^® Risk Management for Banking – that can meet banks' immediate requirements while providing a framework to support future business needs.

This paper illlustrates how Credit Scoring for SAS Enterprise Miner software is used to build credit scoring models for the retail credit industry. It discusses the benefits of performing credit scoring and the advantages of building credit scoring models in-house using SAS Enterprise Miner. It goes on to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of three important model types: the scorecard, the decision tree and the neural network. Finally, it presents a case study where an application scoring model is built with SAS Enterprise Miner, beginning with reading the development sample, through classing and selecting characteristics, fitting a regression model, calculating score points, assessing scorecard quality (in comparison to a decision tree model built on the same sample) and going through a reject inference process to arrive at a model for scoring the new customer applicant population.

The new compositions of source power, meter infrastructure and grid design, and regulatory requirements place increased pressure on utilities' planning and execution capabilities. With the proper application of business analytics, a set of technology solutions that optimizes the energy portfolio, utilities can convert their challenges into opportunities. For best results, utilities should consider four key areas of business analytics: • Advanced forecasting. • Data management. • Optimization. • Energy commodity risk aggregation and analysis.

The recent turbulence in financial markets has made risk management an increasingly critical part of the decision-making process in financial institutions. An integrated approach to risk management is crucial for enabling organizations to consolidate exposures, measure risk and perform stress tests across all lines of business. This white paper discusses in depth the ability of SAS Risk Management for Banking to provide integrated risk management capabilities across your entire enterprise.

As banks increasingly look to best-of-breed, third-party solutions for their risk management and independent derivatives valuation needs, SAS and FINCAD have partnered to offer a joint solution to address these needs. Following this best-of-breed approach can save a bank significant time and costs over developing the systems in-house. This white paper discusses the joint solution from SAS and FINCAD – an enterprise risk management system with independent derivatives valuations – and how the solution enables banks to develop effective risk policies that are designed to continuously manage a firm's risk-and-return profile and the capital required for long-term success.

Maintaining liquid asset portfolios involves a high carry cost and is mandatory by law for most financial institutions. Taking this into account, a financial institution's aim is to manage a liquid asset portfolio in an optimal way, such that it keeps the minimum required liquid assets to comply with regulations. This paper proposes a multistage dynamic stochastic programming model for liquid asset portfolio management that allows for portfolio rebalancing decisions over a multiperiod horizon, as well as for flexible risk management decisions, such as reinvesting coupons, at intermediate time steps.

As a result of the recent market shocks, banks, capital markets firms and asset managers are rethinking certain issues and focusing on: 1) How to integrate not only risk and reward tradeoffs using portfolio theory, but also how to plan for market shocks; 2) The resulting impact of these shocks on the business and its divisions. Leading financial entities are linking their portfolio risk with the return on capital and integrating market liquidity into their analyses in an attempt to gain a more complete view of risk and return. As a result, optimization of capital deployed – rather than just a single view of risk exposures – has become the new role of risk management. This white paper proposes a new framework for optimizing risk management and discusses the technology needed to establish a high-performance computing environment for risk management.

The global financial crisis highlighted major shortcomings in liquidity risk management. As a result, liquidity risk management has entered a new era aimed at ensuring that future liquidity shortages will be less severe and that when shortages do occur, firms will be in a better position to cope. This white paper outlines the failings of liquidity risk management and summarizes the solutions recommended by the industry and the official sector. It then goes on to explain how those solutions can be developed and implemented using the full power of business analytics.

An industry best practice for estimating the market risk of trading operations involves projecting profit-and-loss distributions of portfolios of financial instruments over short time horizons and then summarizing that information into single numbers, such as value at risk (VaR) and expected shortfall. Easy to understand and conceptually straightforward, VaR has long been an industry standard for estimating market risk. The means by which it is calculated and used in practice to manage risk, however, present a number of modeling, data management and reporting challenges. This paper addresses ways in which SAS can help clients overcome these challenges to better measure and manage their market risk.

Unlike any other software tool, spreadsheet programs have found their way into everyday reporting and quick calculations. Because of this popularity, there is frequent talk of overuse and even serious risks posed by spreadsheets. However, spreadsheets are insufficient for regulatory reporting and risk management. This paper explains the risks posed by spreadsheet reliance, proposes the optimum use for spreadsheets as part of an integrated data framework and discusses the role of SAS Business Intelligence software as a risk management solution.

The limitations of prior stress testing frameworks, and the unprecedented adverse impact of the financial crisis, have highlighted the need for a new comprehensive stress testing framework that will allow organizations to aggregate information across the firm and to assess vulnerability to interrelated events across all risk and asset types. This white paper shows how SAS® High-Performance Computing for stress testing addresses many of the past difficulties that firms experienced with firmwide stress testing and has a flexible infrastructure that lets organizations adapt to future requirements as they evolve.

As a result of the recent market shocks, banks, capital markets firms and asset managers are rethinking certain issues and focusing on: 1) How to integrate not only risk and reward tradeoffs using portfolio theory, but also how to plan for market shocks; 2) The resulting impact of these shocks on the business and its divisions. Leading financial entities are linking their portfolio risk with the return on capital and integrating market liquidity into their analyses in an attempt to gain a more complete view of risk and return. As a result, optimization of capital deployed – rather than just a single view of risk exposures – has become the new role of risk management. This white paper proposes a new framework for optimizing risk management and discusses the technology needed to establish a high-performance computing environment for risk management.