Wednesday, November 5, 2008

SAS Enables Customer-Centric Marketing Communication for HF Holidays

LONDON, Oct 28, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- World leading walking and cycling holiday specialists, HF Holidays, has chosen SAS(R) Marketing Automationsoftware as the foundation for improving its marketing communications. SAS' customer-centric marketing software will enable HF Holidays to create better targeted direct mail campaigns and e-newsletter offers to its customers, based on accurate customer data. Using SAS, the company aims to accelerate growth by an additional 5-10 percent within the next 5 years through better targeted mailings.
HF Holidays turned to SAS for a more powerful and sophisticated customer profiling system to improve targeting and personalisation of its marketing communications. SAS, the leader in business analytics, will provide HF Holidays with comprehensive data management, campaign management and advanced customer analytics in one integrated solution.
SAS will integrate data from several separate databases within HF Holidays, significantly improving the quality and accuracy of its customer information. This centralised platform will enable the company to generate accurately targeted campaigns, as well as understand and track customer responses and campaign success, whilst saving time and increasing efficiency.
Aimee Hart, Communications Manager at HF Holidays states: "SAS' complete marketing solution will provide us with a holistic approach to marketing to our customers. With SAS we will be able understand all of our customer data and gather insight into their behaviour. We believe that our marketing campaigns will be more accurate, efficient and successful."
Ian Manocha, Managing Director of SAS UK, states: "The leisure industry is a real growth area for SAS. We have recently expanded our footprint in this market by acquiring IDeaS Revenue Optimisation and forming a new Profit Optimisation Global Practice, showing that we take this market incredibly seriously. It is highly competitive with a diverse customer base; holiday companies need technology that provides the best way of communicating with customers to lift them above the competition. SAS software has proved it can do just that."
SAS' software is currently being installed by consulting partner, Ellion Insight, the travel technology firm. Ellion Insight is providing the analysis, project management and implementation of the system.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/SAS-Enables-Customer-Centric-Marketing/story.aspx?guid=%7B9ADCC428-98BF-4C88-927C-07C25E00A878%7D

Leading Companies See Value in SAS and Teradata Partnership

LAS VEGAS, Oct 29, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- TDC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- A year after announcing their strategic partnership, SAS and Teradata are seeing acceptance and results from customers leveraging the two companies' core strengths: data management, analytical and business intelligence software, and scalable data warehousing.
Over twelve months, SAS, the leader in business analytics, and Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC), the world's largest company solely focused on data warehousing and enterprise analytics, have unveiled new initiatives, products and services to help customers make better, faster decisions to create a competitive advantage. By running and optimizing certain SAS solutions and analytic processes within the Teradata database engine, businesses decrease data movement and increase performance, helping IT more quickly respond to business needs. With this approach, analytic processes are up to 45 times faster, and one joint customer reported processing time cut from 36 hours to one hour and 15 minutes.

The two companies recently announced the SAS and Teradata Advantage Program, designed to accelerate data analysis pertaining to specific business challenges such as fraud detection and credit risk. The announcement included a strategic roadmap for further integration and multiple joint offers in the months ahead.

Customers attest to the value of the SAS-Teradata partnership. "We achieved dramatic results from the SAS and Teradata partnership, including reduced analytic model run times," says Aldo Mancini, founder of INTELeffect and former Vice President at Discover Financial Services. "In one case, we cut the time from one week to 36 minutes, with a tenfold increase in analytic output. Treating SAS and Teradata as a single, managed environment positioned Discover Financial Services to double analytic output throughout 2008."

"We're very excited that SAS and Teradata combined forces," said David Norton, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Harrah's. "The significant advantage to Harrah's is the ability to quickly predict which customers to target for loyalty incentive programs.Keeping customer data inside the Teradata warehouse for analysis greatly reduces the time required to determine what changes to make -- if any -- to our Total Rewards program.The SAS and Teradata combination helps us continue to innovate in driving revenue."

"We anticipate significant benefits from SAS and Teradata's integrated technologies," said Shawn McNelis, VP of Healthcare Informatics at Highmark. "We expect to decrease execution time, cycles and disk space required for extracting data, analyzing it in a separate SAS environment, and pushing it back into the Teradata warehouse. This better balances the capacity between our SAS and Teradata servers. In-database processing reduces application complexity, so our informatics analysts can draw insight more easily from claims, enrollment and provider quality data."

In addition to deeper technical integration and coordinated marketing, sales and services activities, the SAS and Teradata partnership launched a center of excellence (CoE). This dedicated team of information system architects and technical consultants helps customers achieve increased performance and capabilities from joint SAS and Teradata solutions. The SAS and Teradata CoE team has participated in more than 170 global customer engagements spanning all vertical markets. Based on positive feedback, the two companies are increasing their investments in the partnership to meet the growing demand for consulting and architecture assessment services.

Today's announcement came at The Premier Business Leadership Series event in Las Vegas, a business conference presented by SAS that brings together more than 500 attendees from the public and private sectors to share ideas on critical business issues.


http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1979351/

HP and SAS Debut Real-time Customer Intelligence for Financial Services Institutions

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct 29, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Building on a 24-year relationship, HP (HPQ:Hewlett-Packard Co.
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HPQ 36.25, -1.99, -5.2%) and SAS today announced the opening of the HP SAS Customer Intelligence Excellence Center in Cary, N.C.
The center provides an environment for clients to easily understand the benefits they can gain through the integration of the SAS suite of Customer Intelligence solutions with the HP Neoview enterprise data warehouse.
The combination is designed to help companies maximize the business results of marketing programs. Using real-world examples, customers can experience how data can be turned into insight to drive successful marketing campaigns.
The advanced interoperability of the solution, which incorporates data mapping and improved data upload and download time, lets businesses quickly access customer information to deliver increased business value. The first offering in the center is SAS Customer Intelligence for Financial Services, which is focused on credit card companies that use event-driven marketing.
Using this integrated customer intelligence solution, companies can conduct targeted customer-centric marketing and sales campaigns that offer the right product to the right customer at the right time based on a total view of the customers' current interactions with the company.
"Financial Services companies can transform their marketing programs by achieving faster time to market and strengthening customer relationships through the new HP and SAS Customer Intelligence solutions," said Kristina Robinson, vice president and general manager, Business Intelligence Solutions, HP. "HP and SAS are partnering to deliver unique solutions that help financial institutions optimize their business outcomes, and that better serve our joint customers."
"The need for immediate, actionable information is a key concern for financial services companies that seek to deliver the best customer service and the best operating results at the same time," said Jim Davis, chief marketing officer, SAS. "By optimizing the integration of SAS Customer Intelligence solutions with HP Neoview, we can help companies leverage up-to-the-minute customer data in the most efficient and cost-effective ways."
"New real-time analytics platforms, like HP Neoview, promise to make it easier and more cost-effective to derive profitable insights out of massive volumes of data. Consequently, it is terrific to see SAS, the top analytics vendor, partnering with HP because their joint customers will benefit enormously," says Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research at The Data Warehousing Institute.
SAS Customer Intelligence for Financial Services, powered by HP Neoview, is expected to be available soon globally at HP solution centers. More information is available at http://www.hp.com/go/sas.


http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/HP-SAS-Debut-Real-time/story.aspx?guid=%7B2C26DCB5-2857-4AFB-8884-56663E336090%7D

SAS connects digital marketers with mobile users

WEBWIRE – Friday, October 31, 2008
Wireless operators dial up predictive analytics to improve satisfaction, reduce churn

The Premier Business Leadership Series 2008, LAS VEGAS . – New from SAS, the leader in business analytics, SAS® for Mobile Interaction will improve customer intimacy in the mobile device world. This new SAS Customer Intelligence solution, created in cooperation with mobile content enablers, will bring SAS software’s award-winning predictive analytics to mobile marketers to improve results in even tough economic times.

SAS for Mobile Interaction builds on the capabilities of SAS Digital Marketing and SAS Marketing Automation to connect customer and marketing intelligence with interactive multimedia messaging execution. One example is with VOCEL’s Interactive Messaging gateway, a next-generation mobile messaging platform that delivers compelling mobile experiences which motivate users to take action. This union of analytical campaign management with mobile multimedia marketing – part of SAS’ multi-partner strategy – unlocks vast new possibilities for customer feedback, dynamic preloads, intelligent offers and social networking.

"Wireless operators can leverage their unique relationship with consumers to enhance the user experience,” said Susan McNeice, Global Program Manager at Stratecast, a Division of Frost & Sullivan. “By combining business analytics, campaign management, and the interactive capabilities of the handset, the SAS solution gives marketers the opportunity to optimize that relationship while driving value for the consumer, the operator and content producers"
Getting closer to customers

SAS for Mobile Interaction revolutionizes how wireless operators reduce churn while improving customer satisfaction and increasing revenue through customized promotional offers on mobile devices. Before this, marketers using Short Message Service (SMS) to communicate offers to subscribers couldn’t gauge the effectiveness of digital campaigns. SAS shows vendors when an offer arrives, if it is opened or read, and resulting orders, so the campaign can be adjusted as needed.

With SAS, wireless providers can ask customers who consistently exceed allotted minutes, “Are you satisfied with your rate plan? Would you like to upgrade?” Processing responses immediately, the company adjusts the plan before the subscriber jumps to another carrier. The company saves the high cost of winning back customers or replacing them with new ones.

“SAS for Mobile Interaction supports digital content sales, targeted advertising and any other messaging between carrier and subscriber,” said Ken King, Director of Telco and Media Convergence at SAS. “SAS brings the best of digital marketing to mobile devices, providing timely, accurate and cost-effective feedback so wireless providers can better serve customers.”
An end to telemarketing calls

After a subscriber accepts an offer, the provider can send a text message asking, “Were you satisfied?” Because customers can answer with a click, they are likely to respond. Compare that to telemarketers calling the home and hoping the subscriber won’t hang up.

Now, SAS Digital Marketing creates and sends a digital campaign. The mobile interaction vendor’s messaging capability lets opt-in subscribers see the offer on their mobile devices. The customer’s response immediately goes back to SAS Marketing Automation, the campaign management solution.

“We are excited about this opportunity to work with SAS to bring this integrated solution to the market” said Carl Washburn, CEO of VOCEL. “This relationship allows wireless operators to leverage VOCEL’s patented messaging platform and SAS Customer Intelligence solutions to reach customers more effectively than ever before.”

Carrier trials of SAS for Mobile Interaction have been announced by Play in Poland. “SAS for Mobile Interaction could be the next generation communications platform between operators and subscribers” said Marcin Gruszka, Spokesperson of Play, the first multimedia mobile operator in Poland.

SAS Customer Intelligence helps organizations build an integrated framework for enterprise marketing management and implement effective, consistent and timely campaigns and programs across channels. They will target the right customers with the right offers. The power of SAS’ predictive analytics helps executives know how well actual results will match predicted ones, before they invest in new campaigns.

SAS offers turnkey solutions for other vertical markets such as financial services, life sciences, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and others. SAS targeted business solutions support enterprise intelligence, customer intelligence, financial intelligence, supply chain intelligence and more.

Today’s announcement came at The Premier Business Leadership Series event in Las Vegas, a business conference presented by SAS that brings together more than 500 attendees from the public and private sectors to share ideas on critical business issues.


http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=78755

SAS chief dismisses Teradata merger speculation

By Jo Best, Special to ZDNet Asia
Wednesday, November 05, 2008 10:33 AM
SAS chief executive Dr Jim Goodnight has poured cold water on speculation that the business-intelligence company might merge with its former rival, data-warehousing-software company Teradata.

The two companies announced a strategic alliance a year ago that aimed for better integration, and joint marketing and sales efforts for the pair's products.

With Teradata's data-warehousing platform and the SAS applications that sit around it, industry watchers have thought a merger between the two could be a marriage made in heaven.

However, that is not a view Goodnight shares.

"We don't want them on the hardware and they couldn't afford me," Goodnight quipped to ZDNet Asia sister site silicon.com at the company's Premier Business Leadership Series event in Las Vegas.

According to Goodnight, it is hardware barriers that effectively block a union with Teradata.

"You take vendors like HP, Sun, Dell, IBM--there's just lots of hardware that we need to run on and some of our alliances are very strong. Our alliance with HP--there's probably 20 go-to-market situations with them. We're working very closely with HP to deliver solutions to mutual customers," he said.

"If we buy Teradata, those kind of alliances would be frowned upon. I would prefer to stay vendor-neutral or at least have the ability to be vendor-neutral," Goodnight said.

Since the alliance between Teradata and SAS, the business-intelligence (BI) space has seen some big-name consolidation, including IBM's US$5 billion acquisition of Cognos and SAP's purchase of Business Objects for US$7 billion. The moves leave SAS competing with a number of large vendors.

The consolidation trend has brought new pressure to bear on SAS, according to Andreas Bitterer, Gartner's lead analyst on BI.

"The market has undergone a lot of changes in terms of mergers and acquisitions. These four large mega-vendors [Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle] certainly have now a lot of market share overall...and it has certainly pushed everyone more into niches. That doesn't mean that it's a small market in that niche but SAS certainly feels some of the pressure from the large mega-vendors," he told silicon.com.

Bitterer added: "SAS has always had the luxury of having technology really nobody else has...in terms of breadth, from simpler reporting to warehousing to dashboards and all the vertical application from banking and retail and life sciences and pharmaceutical. No other player in the BI space really has that breadth."

Despite now having to compete with these "mega-vendors", Goodnight claimed he is not losing sleep over his new rivals.

"We have always competed against IBM; competed against Cognos; we've competed against SAP for many years. We have over 400 companies we come up against every day because of the broadness of our products," Goodnight said.

"There is little that could happen out there that could keep me awake at night," he added.


http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62047990,00.htm

Vodafone Australia Picks SAS for Marketing Help

10/31/2008
Business analytics company SAS will provide Vodafone Australia with its Marketing Optimization software to enhance marketing campaigns through advanced analytics and optimization techniques.

Vodafone regularly targets more than 1 million customers with direct mail campaigns. But the increasingly inadequate contact strategy led the company to seek an advanced campaign optimization solution.

“We decided to switch to an intelligent solution because of how long it took to manually process information we needed,” said Cahyadi Poernomo of Vodafone Australia. “As the number of campaigns grew and became more integrated, our capabilities became impracticable.”

Vodafone spends millions of dollars on direct marketing campaigns. Poernomo says the company is looking to reduce this outlay up to 30 percent while still enjoying similar or better levels of return.

SAS is used throughout the Vodafone group for modeling and predictive analytics from applications such as customer relationship management through to the resource management of its IT services in many countries, including Australia, Italy, New Zealand and India.

SAS Marketing Optimization collects and analyzes statistics to calculate precisely which elements of the marketing campaigns succeed. The company says up-to-the minute information reveals which channels are most effective in a given situation, which customers to target, and overall campaign effectiveness. The analyses are used to refine and optimize future campaign design and execution for improved return.



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SAS Connects Digital Marketers With Mobile Users

Meanwhile, SAS has introduced SAS for Mobile Interaction. It’s designed to improve customer intimacy in the mobile device world. This new solution is expected to bring SAS software’s predictive analytics to mobile marketers to improve results even in tough economic times.

SAS for Mobile Interaction builds on the capabilities of SAS Digital Marketing and SAS Marketing Automation to connect customer and marketing intelligence with interactive multimedia messaging execution. One example is with VOCEL’s Interactive Messaging gateway, a next-generation mobile messaging platform that delivers compelling mobile experiences which motivate users to take action. This union of analytical campaign management with mobile multimedia marketing – part of SAS’ multi-partner strategy – unlocks vast new possibilities for customer feedback, dynamic preloads, intelligent offers and social networking.

"Wireless operators can leverage their unique relationship with consumers to enhance the user experience,” said Susan McNeice, Global Program Manager at Stratecast, a Division of Frost & Sullivan. “By combining business analytics, campaign management, and the interactive capabilities of the handset, the SAS solution gives marketers the opportunity to optimize that relationship while driving value for the consumer, the operator and content producers."

The company says the solution revolutionizes how wireless operators reduce churn while improving customer satisfaction and increasing revenue through customized promotional offers on mobile devices. Before this, marketers using Short Message Service (SMS) to communicate offers to subscribers couldn’t gauge the effectiveness of digital campaigns. SAS shows vendors when an offer arrives, if it is opened or read, and resulting orders, so the campaign can be adjusted as needed.

http://www.billingworld.com/news/briefs/vodafone-australia-sas-marketing-help.html

SAS, Teradata Partnership Lauded After First Year

10/30/2008
Business analytics company SAS and data warehouser Teradata say they are seeing a lot of success after their first year of partnership. They say customers have been able to leverage the companies’ core strengths: data management, analytical and business intelligence software, and scalable data warehousing.

Over the past year, SAS and Teradata have unveiled new initiatives, products and services to help customers make better, faster decisions to create a competitive advantage. By running and optimizing certain SAS solutions and analytic processes within the Teradata database engine, businesses decrease data movement and increase performance, helping IT more quickly respond to business needs. With this approach, analytic processes are up to 45 times faster, and one joint customer reported processing time cut from 36 hours to one hour and 15 minutes.

The two companies recently announced the SAS and Teradata Advantage Program, designed to accelerate data analysis pertaining to specific business challenges such as fraud detection and credit risk. The announcement included a strategic roadmap for further integration and multiple joint offers in the months ahead.

“We achieved dramatic results from the SAS and Teradata partnership, including reduced analytic model run times,” says Aldo Mancini, founder of INTELeffect and former vice president at Discover Financial Services. “In one case, we cut the time from one week to 36 minutes, with a tenfold increase in analytic output. Treating SAS and Teradata as a single, managed environment positioned Discover Financial Services to double analytic output throughout 2008.”

http://www.billingworld.com/news/briefs/sas-teradata-partners-lauded-after-first-year.html