SAS Honors Customers' Innovative Use of SAS(R) Business Analytics

Enterprise Excellence and User Feedback Awards presented at company's largest user event

SAS GLOBAL FORUM, SEATTLE, April 12 /CNW/ - SAS, the leader in business analytics (http://www.sas.com/businessanalytics/) software and services, honored four companies with its Enterprise Excellence Award for effectively using SAS software to address business challenges and empower leaders to make confident, insightful decisions. Additionally, the User Feedback award was presented to Monika Nauroth of Santander Consumer Bank for her contribution to SAS products over the year.

Canada Post Corporation (http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/languageswitcher.jsf), the country's largest retail network, serving 32 million Canadians and more than 1 million businesses and institutions from coast to coast, uses SAS Business Intelligence in initiatives such as reducing workplace accidents, improving safety, optimizing campaign management, improving service performance and developing advanced pricing analytics. The enterprisewide SAS environment enables Canada Post to provide the necessary customer and operations descriptive and predictive analytics to the right person at the right time to improve cost efficiencies, optimize revenue and drive fact-based decision making.

GE Rail Services (http://www.ge.com/railservices/), a full-service provider for all aspects of railcar and intermodal fleet management, uses SAS for data extraction, modeling and statistical analysis, and employs SAS Business Intelligence software to create easy-to-use, Web-enabled solutions and reporting. GE Rail Services uses SAS to improve credit and collections processes, comply with regulatory requirements and drive down costs by optimizing its railcar repairs and movements.

Telstra (http://www.telstra.com.au/homepage/d1/index.html) is Australia's leading telecommunications and information services company and uses SAS to support a single analytical environment and tool set to assist its specialist analysts and to ensure a consistent and common view of customer insights. With SAS, Telstra has achieved a tenfold increase in its capacity to track and predict customer behaviour and deliver more tailored offers to its customers, resulting in improved customer service, retention and loyalty. Telstra is expecting a 15 percent improvement in strike rates across some of its outbound marketing campaigns. Telstra employs a Teradata data warehouse integrated with SAS capabilities.

Lloyds Banking Group (http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/), the largest retail bank in the UK, is also a SAS Enterprise Excellence Award winner.

    
    SAS user helps improve usability
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Monika Nauroth of Santander Consumer Bank's Risk Decision Analytics group provided invaluable user feedback about SAS Credit Scoring for Banking, especially scorecard development. Nauroth's input on SAS(R) Enterprise Miner(TM), using real-life data, helped to improve usability and functionality with respect to business problems in the banking industry.

"I am very proud and honored that SAS appreciates my work so much. Beside the always helpful answers I received from SAS, I am impressed by how many of my suggestions are integrated in the software," said Nauroth. With 6 million customers in Germany, Santander Consumer Bank is the largest manufacturer-independent financing company for cars, motorcycles and motor homes in Germany, and the leader in consumer goods financing.

Today's announcement was made at SAS Global Forum (http://support.sas.com/events/sasglobalforum/2010/index.html), the world's largest gathering of SAS users, attended by more than 3,000 business and IT users of SAS software and solutions.

ABOUT SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics (http://www.sas.com/businessanalytics/) software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R).

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright (C) 2010 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.

For further information: Editorial Contact: Trent Smith, [email protected], [phone]; Visit the SAS Press Center, www.sas.com/presscenter