SAS extends industry-specific BI and management tools

Business intelligence specialist SAS has improved its tools for industries including retail, manufacturing, and financial services

Business intelligence (BI) giant SAS extended its portfolio of industry-specific reporting and analytics applications this week by launching three new and seven enhanced products for the financial services, manufacturing, retail and telecoms industries.

Unveiled at SAS' annual user group conference in San Francisco, the tools include enhanced versions of SAS' anti-money-laundering, credit risk management and financial compliance products; improved inventory management, markdown and promotion optimisation software for the retail sector, and upgraded warranty analysis for the manufacturing sector.

Meanwhile, a new service-parts-optimisation product is designed to help manufacturers improve after-sales support, and two new suites are designed to help telcos improve management of revenue streams and optimise their price plans.

Jason Goodwin of SAS said the industry-specific strategy was a response to customers demanding analytics and reporting tools that do not require complex integration and customisation.

"When firms buy a vanilla BI solution they often have to spend a lot of time and money configuring it for their industry," Goodwin said. "So this strategy aims to take the sector expertise SAS has built up over the years and embed a lot of it in the applications."

Goodwin added that its industry-specific data models, and roles-based interfaces and functionality within reporting and analytics tools also help firms to deploy the technology more quickly and generate a faster return on investment.

Separately, SAS also announced plans to strengthen its portfolio of data integration technologies. It said it would increase its R&D spending in this area; introduce enhanced data quality capabilities to its Enterprise Data Integration Server; and launch a new customer data integration product to manage customer data across an organisation.