SAS solves challenge of what to do with big data

The ability to integrate more data from more sources faster than ever to accelerate decision-making forms the core value proposition of an the new SAS Customer Intelligence solution unveiled this week at the software company’s Global Forum.



Roughly 4,500 business and IT users of SAS software and solutions attended the company’s Global Forum where the focus was on helping businesses connect data, analytics, and data visualization to become more digitally adept. According to SAS, its new solution brings together digital data from more sources faster than ever before. Quick and easy access to all forms of digital data — social, mobile or e-commerce — leads to quicker decisions for customer engagement and digital operations, according to the company. SAS Customer Intelligence is said to provide marketers with answers in minutes or seconds and displays reports with graphical clarity using visual analytics reporting capabilities.



“For many companies, being a digital business means bolting on yet another digital touch point such as a mobile app or social channel,” said Wilson Raj, global director of customer intelligence at SAS. “But a true digital business strives to connect data, analytics, customer experience and operations as a single business capability. With our latest solution companies can analyze data faster, for quicker customer engagement and marketing operations decisions. And get instant access to custom reports with powerful data visualization analytics to not only deepen consumer understanding but also track and demonstrate the business value of all marketing activities.”



According to SAS, some of the other enhancements to its new Customer Intelligence suite include:

• Enhanced visualization of marketing actions: Marketers can create, view and organize reports on campaign performance using a new Reports Workspace. Intuitive analytics and interactive data visualizations allow marketers to consider more scenarios, thus improving quality of decisions and marketing actions. Besides providing faster answers, it strengthens collaboration and accountability in the marketing department.


• Enriched customer data: Users can now further enrich customer profiles with social IDs. Where relevant APIs allow the extraction of that data, marketers can either match customers across various digital devices and channels or link customer logins, emails, accounts, and other unstructured data to a social ID. Marketers can use this deeper customer knowledge in ongoing analysis or incorporate into business rules to enhance customer experience.


• Expanded data sources: Enhancements allow marketers to analyze more e-commerce data items, such as payment type, shipping cost, tax, shipping and billing address and customer comments. Marketers can better serve their customers, for example, if they understand the relationship between out-of-stock messages, back orders or shipping cost on shopping cart abandonment.


• More contextualized multichannel interactions: By specifying how campaigns or interactions are sequentially delivered through other interactive channels (web sites and call centers), marketers can improve customer experience - delivering more individualized offers, information and interactions. Marketers can deliver contextualized content via multiple interactive channels, based on a single customer action or decision, e.g. when a customer contacts a call center for a service upgrade. In addition to guiding the agent to the next best action (such as a discount offer) during the call, analytics can also determine the best follow-up — say, a thank-you note displayed on the company’s landing page the next time that customer visits.

“The newly announced SAS Customer Intelligence helps businesses bring together data from more sources at faster speeds, allowing for accelerated and more strategic decision making,” said Mira Perry, manager of the enterprise applications research at IDC. “By understanding the customer through multiple touch points, the creation and targeting of digital content becomes faster and more strategic. During and after campaign execution, visual analytics capabilities can make it easier for marketing professionals to analyze and refine campaign performance. These are critical capabilities for today's marketing organizations seeking a competitive edge.”