Magazine - SASCOM

sascom
essentials of
Marketing analytics
Bringing data to the
BoardrooM
data Modeling secrets
Macy's
GE
Inventing a healthier future

Breakthroughs in patient safety from GE Vice President Mark Vachon
second quarter 2011
THE PREMIER BUSINESS LEADERSHIP SERIES
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Innovate. Optimize. Transform. The Premier Business Leadership Series is an exclusive, invitation-only event for senior executives from public and private organizations. This unique learning and networking experience has carefully curated content with an eye on competing in a global business environment. Attendees experience:

High-caliber presentations on the most current trends. Small group discussions addressing the challenges of leadership. Sessions for sharing industry-specific issues.
2011 Locations
Antwerp June 14 16 Singapore August 23 24 Orlando October 25 27
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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. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. 2011 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. 66644US.0211
contents SECOND quARTER 2011 coVer

a safer, healthier 14 inventing future
GE Vice President Mark Vachon on treating patient safety data with SAS.
features
19 Bridging the marketing gap

Three essentials of marketing analytics to take you from theory to execution.
19
........
22 listen up!
Top 10 lessons gleaned from The Premier Business Leadership Series 2010.
24 keeping you covered for life

Max New York Life expands existing customer relationships and profits.
27 going social the organic way

From sentiment analysis to predictive ROI, digital advertising agency Organic gives clients social media measurements that matter. Which of these blockbuster ideas can you put to work at your company?
coluMns
3 tech highlight Macys statistics chief shares five steps for getting more out of your customer data. 5 risk ManageMent New research reveals that data
management is now a boardroom-level discussion.
30 nine great ideas to steal
32 social innovation in the public sector

Governments around the world are using analytics to build a stronger future.
7 Business analytics How to implement a decision support system from a CIO who loves his rotten job. 10 Partner insights You can make the move from simple reporting to advanced analytics, if you have the right data environment.
dePartMents
35 online Our favorite Web resources.
27.....
featured Blog
36 Best of Blogs Jim Davis on why the Fortune 'Best Companies to Work For' ranking matters in social media.
On the cover: Mark Vachon, GE Photo by Steve Muir
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2011
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editors note
Subscriptions to sascom are available free of charge: www.sas.com/subscriptions Drop by to read or comment on our blog at: blogs.sas.com/sascom
whos who and where to find them.

Editorial dirEctor Kelly R. LeVoyer, kelly.levoyer@sas.com Editor-in-chiEf Anne-Lindsay Beall, anne-lindsay.beall@sas.com managing Editor Waynette Tubbs, waynette.tubbs@sas.com Blog Editor Alison Bolen, alison.bolen@sas.com copy Editors
Amy Dyson, Trey Whittenton

WEB support
Anna Brown, Ann Culp

Editorial contriButors
SAS = Analytics
At the SAS analyst event in Steamboat, CO, in March, SAS CEO Jim Goodnight shared some interesting stats with attendees: Even in 2010s tough economy, SAS experienced 5.2 percent worldwide growth in US dollars. On top of that, SAS is still building new facilities, still winning workplace awards (see page 36), and this year were celebrating 35 consecutive years of revenue growth. The secret behind SAS success? As Goodnight told the crowd in Steamboat: SAS is all about analytics. Its been our focus for 35 years and, as our customers and the numbers attest, we do it better than anyone else in the business. If you want to see the power of analytics at work, check out these stories: Macys improved marketing results by millions of dollars over the last two years (page 3). GE Healthcare keeping patients safe by helping hospitals address common, preventable medical events (page 14). Max New York Life increased sales to existing customers from 7 percent to more than 20 percent (page 24). Want to put the power of analytics to work for you? Check out A CIOs perspective on using analytics on page 7; find out how to move from BI to advanced analytics on page 10; and check out three essentials of marketing analytics on page 19.
Ken Bland, Alison Bolen, Jane Booth, Mark Britton, Paul Coleman, Jim Davis, Jaydeep Deshpande, Carl Farrell, Bill Franks, Mikael Hagstrm, Larry Mosiman, Niel Nickolaisen, John Quinn, David Rogers, Trent Smith, Cathy Traugot, Scott VanValkenburgh
circulation
Ellen Brandt, Diana Christofferson

art dirEction production
Marchellina Waugh Melody Fountain
photography
John Fernez, Steve Muir
suBscriBE www.sas.com/subscriptions
sascom is published quarterly by SAS Institute Inc. Copyright 2011 SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved. Limited copies may be made for internal staff use only. Credit must be given to the publisher. Otherwise, no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the publisher. 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. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. From time to time sascom may contain articles written by contributing writers not employed by SAS Institute Inc. The opinions of these columnists do not necessarily reflect those of SAS Institute. SAS is the leader in business analytics 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. www.sas.com
AnnE-LindSAy BEALL
Editor-in-Chief
SAS World Headquarters SAS Campus Drive Cary, NC 27513 USA Tel: 919-677-8000 Fax: 919-677-4444 US and Canada Sales: 800-727-0025
SAS welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters and all other inquiries to sascom S66542.0910 Printed in the USA. ISSN 1531-3986
magazine, SAS Institute Inc., SAS Campus Drive, Cary, NC 27513; or send e-mail to anne-lindsay.beall@ sas.com. All letters will be considered for publication and may be edited for length, clarity, grammatical accuracy and stylistic consistency.
2 sascom second quarter 2011
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coluMn TECH HIGHLIGHT
Macys Inc: Five steps for getting more out of your customer data
Statistics chief sculpts customer data into a work of art
E
PAuL COLEMAN, MACYS INC.
very interaction with a customer is an opportunity to get useful data. Never before could marketers
sale or a loyalty program? What is the target? You have to have a clear idea of what the analytics are intended to reveal, because the most appropriate modeling approach will depend on what youre trying to achieve. Here is where the marketing community can make its most valuable contribution. Theres a certain amount of information you can glean from models, and models provide a structure for decision making, but the business community has to engage and decide upon what will create success.
compile so much information about customers and markets, transform that information into useful knowledge, and guide the investment of resources with such precision. Trouble is, data pours in from every conceivable channel, from incompatible computing platforms in mismatched data definitions and redundant customer entries. Transforming all this data into a clean, analysis-ready format can be a daunting challenge.
its like creating a sculpture
Are you going to press forward with intuition or take advantage of advanced analytics? Does the marketing team gather in a big room to brainstorm, or do you put yourselves in the hands of mathematical models? Both approaches have their merits and limitations. An intuitive approach is easy to understand and communicate, because the logic will generally be self-evident. It is quick and easy to change course if something isnt working as expected. However, you could course-correct so many times that you lose track of the process. In contrast, an analytic approach provides a consistent and reproducible structure for the decision-
Choose the right tools for the job and the medium.
An accurate perspective on your customer is within your data. You just have to take away everything thats not important.
When carving his masterpieces, Michelangelo felt that the figures were within the stone, and it was his job to liberate them. Similarly, it is our job to liberate the customer insight from all of the data. The modeling process is a series of five steps equivalent in some ways to the artistic process, whether working with stone, wood or data.
Is it an enterprisewide promotion or a brand-building task? A one-time mailing or an integrated campaign? A one-day
Know what you have been commissioned to sculpt.
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TECH HIGHLIGHT
making process. Everything has a place and everything makes sense. If your data went through all of the steps properly in the modeling procedure, youre going to get the results. The best approach is to marry creative vision with technical expertise the qualitative with the quantitative. leak information from the future to the past. Data sets built during the modeling process incorporate forward-looking insight about events and behaviors that havent actually happened. To preserve the quality of your raw material the data foundation for modeling the process must not taint the data by using future unknowns in the same way as past certainties. may ask how he or she sounded. You say, You were wonderful, but you really have no idea. If you start to break down your chorus into smaller and smaller ensembles, you can begin to hear individual voices more clearly. Thats what the data reduction process achieves. It creates an environment where the true voices become clear.
In data modeling, that means capturing the right customer universe and variables that will reveal your ideal target customers, working from raw material data that is as high-quality and free of defects as possible. An interesting angle to the concept of data quality is that analytical models travel freely through time learning from the past, projecting into the future, and using that speculated future to create information for the present. This time-traveling ability blurs the concept of now and can distort your data if youre not clear on how the time dimension affects the information. Your data captures a past "now," which is a picture of what customers looked like in the past and how they responded to a previous event. You have a future now that describes what customers will look like on the day you want to select them. Then there is an even more far-reaching future now that describes how customers will likely look after some future event that is similar to the past event. For example, will they buy or not buy? How much will they spend? Eventually, all of these nows will become past nows, and the model moves on to looking at future nows to influence a new present now. Sound confusing? It can be. If youre not careful, this time traveling can cause damage to your data. We call them temporal leaks, where you inadvertently
Find the right piece of marble or wood.
PrEcIsE ModElInG = ProFItabIlIty

The modeling process is a continuously improving cycle that: Draws on historical data to create an accurate view of customers. Identifies the variables that are the most valid predictors of success. Assigns scores to customers, using coefficients and weighting functions for these variables. Reveals which customers are most likely to respond to offers, and how they will respond. Supports post-campaign analysis and continuous improvement.
Build, test, refine and execute analytical models that will deliver on your desired goals. Youre not limited to just one type of modeling method. Some are more insightful, others more mathematical. Not all give the best results for all applications. The idea is to choose the modeling routine that works the best for your application. That means the model assessment stage is quite important. Multiple models can work in complementary ways to create a big picture. At Macys we build at least two models for most events: one that predicts the probability of someone shopping, and another that predicts how much that person is going to spend. We combine these models to maximize the analysis. For a high-volume marketer, even a small increase in campaign response rates can make a significant impact on the bottom line. Macy's use of analytics over the last two years has improved marketing results by millions of dollars. And thats just for direct mail campaigns. n [author bio] Paul Coleman, PhD, is the Director of Marketing Statistics for Macys Inc. nline Customer analytics webcast: www.sas.com/sascom-cawebcast
Polish and present your creation.
www.sas.com/sascom-modeling
Chip away all the extraneous data and variables that dont matter. We have lots of numbers in front of us, but only certain ones are actually useful. The process entails data wrangling to make the data model-ready, then rough-cutting the data to remove extraneous data points and variables. We might initially start with 1,000 variables and reduce that to about 100. Think about hearing somebody sing in a chorus of 1,000 people. After the performance, a singer
Chip away at everything t hat imprisons the figure.
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coluMn RISk MANAGEMENT
ready to take the data challenge?

According to new research from The Economist, effective data management is now a boardroom-level discussion
or years, board members could safely regard data as an operational issue requiring little discussion. This
distributed inconsistently across multiple divisions, and even when it could be gathered, the data had to be aggregated so that overall exposures could be measured. In addition, regulatory changes are forcing boards to focus on data issues. In the US, for example, an important theme of the Dodd-Frank legislation is an assessment of risk exposure across the entire financial system. One aspect of this new regulatory intervention is likely to be a greater requirement for financial institutions to make risk exposure data available. In combination, these trends are encouraging a broad review of the boards role and responsibilities toward data. There is a growing realization that data should be viewed as an asset with fundamental strategic importance.
is no longer the case. The financial crisis exposed the shortcomings of data in a large number of institutions and highlighted the need to pay greater attention to this valuable asset. Over the past three years, research conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on behalf of SAS has consistently highlighted data as a barrier to effective risk management for many financial institutions. In the most recent survey, just 39 percent of respondents believed that their organizations were effective at collecting, standardizing and storing risk data. 1 Respondents also considered insufficient data among the top three shortcomings preventing more effective risk management. Why has data been elevated to a boardroom discussion? For one thing, key stakeholders want assurances that boards are providing robust oversight and making well-informed decisions based on solid data. For another, data enables institutions to respond quickly and effectively to crisis. In the hours leading to Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, some institutions were unable to calculate their aggregate exposures to Lehman and its subsidiaries in a timely manner because data was
DAVID ROGERS, SAS
The data officer-in-chief

As the leaders of the business, board members set the tone for increased awareness of datas importance and move the organization toward greater respect for its accuracy, integrity and flexibility.
For years, board members could safely regard data as an operational issue requiring little discussion. This is no longer the case.
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RISk MANAGEMENT
One way in which boards can gain a better understanding of data issues is to create a chief data officer (CDO) role, says Sam Harris, Director of Enterprise Risk Management at Teradata. The CDO has responsibility for managing data as a strategic asset and ensuring the quality of the data thats being used or presented. In 2006, Citigroup became one of the first major financial institutions to name a CDO. The leadership of the company recognized that data is not only important for good decision making, but also that we need to have much more integrity around how the data is created, stored, analyzed, and who is using what, says Jennifer Courant, a Managing Director for Risk Architecture at Citi in the US. Creating the chief data officer role was one response to those challenges. Just as a chief risk officer helps the board understand the technical aspects of risk management, the chief data officer has a similar educational role. The CDO has an obligation to train the board on issues of the firms data quality and processes so that they can understand the metrics and decide whether something requires more attention, says Harris. combination, these metrics can provide an indication of the level of confidence boards should have in the inputs to their decision making. It also helps to think of a supply chain for data: a series of component disciplines comprising the life cycle of information as it passes through the institution. This begins with acquisition and runs through processing, maintenance, distribution and consumption. Another way boards can gain confidence in the data is to examine it from various dimensions. For example, request the same information from multiple sources risk and finance, say. And if youre getting a consistent response from both sides of the organization, then that tends to be a strong proxy for good quality data, says Culp.
Asking the right questions

Although boards cannot be expected to be familiar with the entire data life cycle, a highlevel understanding of the overall process can help direct their line of questioning. For example, they may want to ask how the data is gathered, how many times it was replicated, how the data flows through the organization, and how it is being cleaned and manipulated. Anne Milley, Senior Director of Analytics Strategy for JMP Product Marketing at SAS, points to the quality improvement processes applied by manufacturers and says that financial institutions should think of their data in the same way. You need to manage data as though it is something that is produced, and then you can apply quality improvement concepts to the data collection and management processes, says Milley. Theres no single measure of data quality, but taken in
The view from the top

Leading financial institutions now recognize that data can be a major source of strategic advantage. 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. n
1 Rebuilding Trust: Next Steps for Risk Management in Financial Services. www.sas.com/sascom-riskwp
data qualIty: thrEE tIPs For GEttInG startEd

1 Start with self-reflection. Whats your data management style? Are you undisciplined, reactive, proactive or governed with respect to data management? Understanding the data maturity of your organization is the first step toward determining how youll manage data from this point forward. 2 Recognize that a successful strategy encompasses people, process and technology. your organization needs buy-in from iT, executives and employees, and they all need to adhere to a documented, repeatable process to ensure consistent data across the enterprise. Add the right technology and you have what it takes to make your new system work. 3 Take small steps. Achieving true data quality is an evolutionary process; it cant be done overnight. Even the most mature businesses need to make incremental goals before moving toward the next level of data governance. blogs.sas.com/inspire/ba-dq
[author bio] David Rogers is the Global Product Marketing Manager for Risk at SAS. David.Rogers@suk.sas.com nline Data as a Board-Level Issue white paper: www.sas.com/sascom-boardlevel Risk Management Knowledge Exchange: www.sas.com/sascom-rmke
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coluMn BuSINESS ANALYTICS
a cIo perspective on using analytics

Tips for delivering value from a CIO who loves his rotten job
am not looking for sympathy, but . . . being an enterprise CIO is a rotten job. The demands are constantly increasing
for its business and market failings. The team then decided to refresh the entire technology stack and brought me in to effect this IT turnaround. Once on board, I quickly realized that the biggest failing of the legacy IT system was that it provided no decision support. Without good decision support, the leaders of the organization were blind to the needs of the market. They could not match products to market needs. Every day, they guessed about what products to sell and how to sell them. Some of their guesses were good, they just weren't good enough to keep them afloat given the competition.
while the budgets shrink. If I am a perfect CIO which means that my systems are never down, I deliver every project on-time, on-budget and on-target, all while maintaining cost leadership the best I can ever hope to achieve is to meet expectations. As soon as my systems hiccup or I miss a project goal or the enterprise perceives that I am not wringing every possible dollar out of my operation, I have failed to meet expectations and my credibility falls. Given the rotten nature of the job, you might wonder why I have such a passion for my role. The truth is that being a CIO is a great way to deliver an incredible amount of value. And, business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools are often my best friend in delivering this value. Let me give you an example:
NIEL NICkOLAISEN, ENERGY SOLuTIONS INC.
Ask the right questions

Facing this opportunity, I took a decision support approach to the selection and implementation of the new IT systems. This meant that we did not talk about transaction processing, hardware options or software functionality. Rather, we started by asking the executive team members and their staffs, What decisions would you like to make? Once we had these
A decision-support case study

Several years ago, I was hired to transform the IT of a struggling specialty retailer. This retailer had suffered through seven years of losses and was being battered by new competition from big-box retailers. Facing these challenges, the executive team took the too-common approach of blaming IT
Once on board, I quickly realized that the biggest failing of the legacy IT system was that it provided no decision support.
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answers, we drilled down one level and asked, What information do you need in order to make these decisions? We then selected and developed the transactional systems that would generate the internal versions of this information and selected BI tools that would make this and external information available to make the decisions that ended up turning around this retailer.
they liked and did not like about doing business with us, and their specific needs. Analyzing our survey results, we identified four specific customer segments each with its own unique decision driver. For example, one segment was interested in the latest products. Another was interested in purchasing what was on sale. Knowing these four decision drivers, we revised our entire approach to the market to address at least one, but preferably more, of the drivers. All advertising hit these segment needs. We re-designed our physical and Web stores so that new and on-sale products were the first things people saw when they entered. Discovering that one of our segments relied on others for product recommendations, we launched our own version of a social
network to connect these people with trusted product advisors.
Focus on the right marks

Within a few months we started to see the results of better decision making. Revenue climbed, as did profits. It turned out that knowing the segment drivers meant we could replace expensive and somewhat ineffective broad-based advertising with less expensive, more targeted direct marketing. Taking this decision support approach also made my IT transformation job much easier. With the company focused on what it needed to make better decisions, there was less emphasis on the functionality of the new applications. Rather than fighting battles about how to configure the inventory management module of the new
Know your customer segments

One of the most important answers to the question, What decisions would you like to make? was to decide how we should approach our target markets. As a result, we launched a fairly extensive customer analysis. We surveyed our customers on what drove their purchase decisions, what
FIvE rEasons to joIn IIa

Why join the international institute for Analytics (iiA)? you'll get to share ideas and learn from the world's leading independent analytics community, for a start. you can also:
enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, we could satisfy people by confirming that a standard, vanilla configuration would allow them to make all of the decisions about inventory they ever wanted to make.
1 2 3 4 5
Find relevant research on the use and management of analytics. According to Tom davenport, there is no other organization with the same mission. Learn from respected independent researchers and thought leaders, including John Elder, James Taylor, Anne Milley and Jeanne Harris. interact with analytics thought leaders via online discussions, face-to-face events and a webcast program called Office Hours. Take advantage of the brightest minds in the vendor world without the bias of sales and marketing. Vendor participation will be clearly identified. Explore new topics in analytics including how organizations benefit from analytical approaches to pricing, social media analytics and more.
implement decision support

Now, lest you think that it was easy to add this much value to the enterprise, please recall what a rotten job it is to be a CIO. The retailer was not used to thinking about decision making. Rather, it was used to thinking in terms of transactions. It took an awful lot of heavy lifting to reorient this perspective. For some, viewing the world through the prism of decisions is daunting. Decisions are risky. Decisions imply accountability. What happens if I make a bad decision? What happens if my decisions are based on faulty or obsolete data? To ease people over these humps, I rely on the following:
if you would like to join iiA, use the code SAS90 when you register to receive a 90-day trial individual membership. www.sas.com/sascom-iia
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If, in my rotten CIO role, I can deliver the tools and thought process that makes better decision making a reality, I become an irreplaceable business leader.
Iterative methods If designing BI and analytics around decision making is a seismic shift in thinking, I start with targeted prototypes and pilot programs. For my pilots, I enlist the group that is the most willing to try new things or the group that is in the most pain, and then work closely with them to select a test case of decisions they would like to make and what information they need to make these decisions. We then select a subset of these decisions as our test case. We design our BI and thought process to support these decisions. Once improvement is confirmed, we move onto the next subset or pilot group. The perfect future A persistent issue in designing for better decisions is the feeling that we are limited by either technology or access to accurate information. I solve this by basing my designs on the assumption that, at some point in the future, both technology and access to information will be perfect. Continuing my specialty retailer example, we had no idea that smart phone technology would be so pervasive or that millions of our customers would join social networks. But, in designing our decision support, we brainstormed all the marvelous things we could do if technology were perfect. We assumed that we could know, somehow, someway, when a return customer entered a store. If this were true, what decisions would we want to make? What actions could we take? We then backed up to processes that we could implement given the technology and information available at the time. But, thinking of future perfect not only kept us on the forefront of better decisions, it also kept our future options open as the technology and access to information did change. Reports are not business intelligence Reports are extremely useful, but we often carry a burden of hundreds or thousands of reports that may no longer help us make better decisions. Given my scarce resources, I like to winnow down this library to a small set that add decisionmaking value. The reports that deserve our attention are those that answer the what information do you need in order to make those decisions question. That way, every report has a purpose. Using this approach, I have reduced report libraries by as much as 80 percent. BI and reports belong to the decision makers Since my goal is to enable better decision making, I want to make sure that there is as little distance as possible between decision makers and the business intelligence tools we use to gather and sift the information. That means I want to get IT out of the report writing and analytics business. One of my prime criteria for selecting BI tools is ease of use. The tools must be understandable by someone without a technology background. Decision support transforms my CIO role Over the past 20 years, we have implemented nearly every conceivable transactional system. These systems are generating volumes of data. Outside of our systems, other systems are generating volumes of data. I honestly believe that my organizations future success depends on our ability to turn this data into information that we use to make better decisions. In the end, superior decision making might just be the ultimate competitive advantage. And if, in my rotten CIO role, I can deliver the tools and thought process that makes better decision making a reality, I become an irreplaceable business leader. n
*This article originally appeared on the International Institute for Analytics website. Copyright 2010 IIA. All rights reserved. Condensed and reprinted by permission.
[author bio] Niel Nickolaisen is the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at Energy Solutions Inc. CRN magazine named Nickolaisen one of the Top 25 IT Executives of 2008. nline SAS Analytics on Facebook: www.sas.com/sascom-facebook Imperatives for the New CIO special report: www.sas.com/sascom-cio
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coluMn PARTNER INSIGHTS
Moving from bI to advanced analytics

How to create the right data environment
B
SCOTT VANVALkENBuRGH, SAS
usiness intelligence provides companies with valuable historical information, keeping many
in fraud analysis, knowing what happened yesterday and stopping the same thing from happening tomorrow is only step one. With advanced analytics, organizations can now identify fraud before they write a check, refund money or settle a claim. This seems simple enough, but even companies with sound enterprise data management practices, processes and infrastructures that were built for traditional BI reporting cannot always handle the complex requirements and unpredictable workloads of operational analytics. The good news is that much of the work that establishes enterprise-class business intelligence creating consistent data, rigorous systems governance, and sophisticated data integration and data quality can serve as a sound foundation for advanced analytics. However, the question often raised is how to use existing platforms and maintain predictable performance and governance without limiting the ability of analysts to explore, transform and develop data and models in an ad hoc fashion.
organizations competitive during tough times. Purchasing departments, for example, use business intelligence (BI) to monitor, choose and negotiate with suppliers. Customer service departments use it to identify problems. Airlines use BI to monitor the status and performance of their fleets and personnel. Though BI provides many advantages, it has limited ability to predict, forecast, and make inferences on unknown facts and relationships for instance, predicting customer behavior, the probability of fraud, or suggesting the next best offer during an online transaction. For these reasons, most companies are enhancing their BI practices to include predictive analytics and data mining. This combines the best of strategic reporting and basic forecasting with additional operational intelligence and decision-making functions. By developing the capability to move from insight to action, leading businesses are combining historical and predictive analysis to determine what immediate actions to take.
BILL FRANkS, TERADATA
Setting up your analytics sandbox

No matter how you slice it, advanced analytics is different. The discipline requires a demand-driven, forward-looking, flexible, exploratory process. Any attempt
A foundation for advanced analytics

In todays economic environment, good enough is no longer enough. For example,
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Absence of thorough analysis can lead to inconsistent conclusions or even operational decisions that are just plain wrong.
to limit these dimensions will inhibit the effectiveness of the analyst. The solution lies in todays best-inclass enterprise data warehouse (EDW) technologies, such as those offered by Teradata, that allow practitioners to establish virtual or physical analytic sandboxes. These sandboxes comprise dedicated disk space and processing resources that allow analysts the freedom to do what they need. Regardless of data size or model complexity, adding sandbox capabilities to the corporate reference architecture gives IT the ability to provision part of the EDW for an individual line of business or analyst. This can be accomplished while still maintaining optimum, balanced and
predictable performance for the rest of the enterprise. Business requirements, not technology limitations, should determine how to set up a sandbox. Examples include analytics that are exploratory, cyclical or unpredictable in nature; have only a few power users with a narrow focus; or use models that are resource-intensive. Whether implementing sandboxes within the production system or in a separate analytics development environment, the data used to feed them must be fresh and accurate, the systems supporting them must provide linear performance, and analysts must be able to explore at a granular level with minimal data duplication
and movement. Most importantly, the sandbox must allow analysts to write and edit enterprisewide data (and incorporate outside data if necessary) to create accurate, representative data sets. SAS and Teradata have offerings to support all of these requirements.
Avoiding analytic pitfalls

Take the example of a supermarket chain. For marketing analysts to optimize customer profitability or create the best sales promotional calendar, they need query-based data mining and exception analysis as well as advanced statistical modeling. Absence of thorough analysis can lead to inconsistent conclusions or even operational decisions that are just plain wrong. Data must be
sas and tEradata: advancEd analytIcs In actIon

Companies all over the world are using SAS and Teradata solutions for advanced analytics and enjoying rapid results, including CommonweAlth BAnk of AuStRAlIA detects twice the level of check fraud and increased internet banking fraud alerts by 60 percent. CABELAS specialty retailer personalizes offers, schedules promotions, selects new store locations and more, resulting in double-digit growth. HELLEniC BAnK analyzes risk across multiple business processes and reduced analysis time from four days to two hours. www.sas.com/sascom-results
granular and cross a number of subject areas: inventory, financial, customer, regional demographics, etc. Another reason for creating an analytical sandbox is to avoid advanced analytics in a vacuum. Many organizations deploy expensive analytics data marts based on silos of data focused on an individual department or line of business. Yet, despite the investments, some companies cant answer the simplest questions, such as Which of our most valuable customers are likely to churn? or Which vendors
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PARTNER INSIGHTS
provide the best price and assortment but do not drive profitability across their category? Thats because theyre stuck working with limited or out-of-date information from the EDW. Lets look at the problems this causes. Casinos want to identify their best customers and reward them. One casino company decided it needed a 360-degree view of its customers spending and behavioral patterns across all properties and outlets. Achieving this prior to and reward them the minute they walk in the door. When analysis is done in isolation, it can lead to mistakes that drive customers away. Take the example of a hotel chain that uses marketing automation to identify customers who would respond to promotion offers. The marketing campaigns succeed in driving booking calls to the reservation desk. However, the marketing department doesnt coordinate its data with the conventions division. If business action. Unfortunately, in this case the insight was not synchronized with the appropriate action. Thus a great idea led to pushing customers away. Having immediate access to the right data, in the right format, is no longer a goal its an imperative. Development of a Teradata EDW that drives a best-in-class business intelligence strategy is a big step in the right direction. Combining it with realtime operational business analytics from SAS is a huge advantage that will help any organization succeed. n
A version of this article appeared in InfoManagement Direct, Sept. 23, 2010.
sas and tEradata: onE ProGraM, thrEE PowErFul analytIc PackaGEs

Think your company cant afford the implementation time or big-ticket price tag for advanced in-database analytics? Think again. The SAS and Teradata Analytic Advantage Program offers three packages to meet your growing analytic needs. expReSS An entry-level offering for those who want to explore business questions using analytics. This offering uses a programming tool approach to employ statistical analysis and discovery to gain a quick understanding of critical issues. AdVAnCEd For both established and expanding analytic organizations. Using in-database technologies, this package streamlines analytic model development and deployment. enteRpRISe For mature analytic organizations, this package allows you to centralize the development, deployment and management of analytic models and processes, and quickly reap benefits by automating analytic decision making. www.sas.com/sascom-program
[author bio] Scott VanValkenburgh is the Director of Technology Alliances at SAS. Bill Franks is Teradata Chief Analytic Officer, Global SAS Program. nline Quick-start analytics from SAS and Teradata: www.sas.com/sascom-qkstart Advancing in-database analytics: www.sas.com/sascom-idbarticle
implementing a Teradata EDW was costly and time-consuming. SAS analysts spent more time gathering and moving the data from different properties than modeling it. The company consolidated the information in one EDW and gave access to its analysts to model the data in a separate sandbox. The result: The gaming company drove loyalty and wallet share up from 35 percent to 43 percent. In addition, the company can now identify gamers with the attributes to be particularly profitable customers
the promotional offers coincide with a convention weekend when several of the properties are booked, the reservations agents must then walk customers to competitive properties. Its possible the convention information would have been available to the marketing department if the company was using an EDW platform. But without the complete and up-to-date view of all subject areas associated with the models, a sound analytic conclusion suggested an incorrect
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inventing
a saFEr, hEalthIEr FuturE
gE healthcare treats patient safety data with SAS Analytics
GE
founder Thomas A. Edison once said: I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it
might give others. I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent. As it has been for more than a century, that spirit of imagination and invention is still hard at work at GE. Synonymous with the word innovation, the company is applying its collective imagination to change some of the worlds toughest problems not the least of which is access to quality health care for everyone, the world over.
Healthymagination: cost, quality and access

Guided by its vision to change health care delivery through an early health model, the GE Healthcare division is working in more than 100 countries to deliver solutions for early diagnosis, intervention and prevention. As the world moves toward the concept of a digital hospital, it is also leading the way in the development of technology for patient monitoring, imaging and information delivery. The company even developed a website www.healthymagination.com to help build stronger relationships between patients and doctors through the collection, exchange and discussion of healthy ideas. Were at work for a healthier world, says Mark Vachon, former President and CEO of GE Healthcares
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On average, we're seeing a tenfold increase in the number of events being captured by the Medical Event Reporting System.
Mark Vachon, forMer President and ceo of ge healthcare, now VP of ge ecoMagination
$9 billion Americas region, recently promoted to Vice President of Ecomagination, GEs sustainable business strategy. Thats the purpose every GE Healthcare employee wakes up and comes to work for its an incredibly important purpose and it energizes us. Our strategy is called healthymagination, which really boils down to cost, quality and access. Everything we do is focused on using our significant resources to innovate along those axes, and to make a difference in every part of the world. With its significant shoulder behind the advancement of universal solutions to help everyone gain access to quality, low-cost health care, GE is applying research, knowledge and technology to deliver a broad array of health care solutions. Solutions like Qualibria, its real-time clinical knowledge platform for bedside patient treatment, and AgileTrac, to help optimize hospital facility capacity and asset management, are prime examples of the imaginative and innovative work Edison himself would have been proud of.
Healthcares Performance Solutions1 team formed its own patient safety organization (PSO). In the US, for example, leading medical facilities work with a PSO to report near misses and adverse events, such as falls or wrong-site surgeries, to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) a federal agency for the improvement of quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care. GE is using SAS Business Analytics to store, analyze and deliver patient safety information back to member hospitals to help address common, preventable medical events. In the airline and manufacturing industries, the culture of reporting near misses is robust. You dont want to find out about an issue when its an event, but rather when its a near miss, explains Vachon. The ratio of near misses to actual events in the airline industry is approximately 50-to-1. Its a culture thats developed on the expectation that if theres an issue, it gets surfaced. In the health care industry, the ratio is not well-documented, but its about 300-to-1, he continues. The reason is that the culture of medical professionals is resistant to reporting on peers, much less themselves, regarding near-miss events. Not to mention the fear of
Better patient data = better patient care

Building upon a sterling platform of health innovation, GE
an aPP a day keeps the doctor away

GEs Healthymagination is guided by the principle that better health for more people is possible. its project website www.healthymagination.com houses a variety of useful health-related content, including practical and fun mobile applications available for download. Morsel morsel was developed to help people get a little bit healthier every day by suggesting simple, daily tasks that anyone can do. sleeP on it take control of your sleep patterns with this app that combines alarm clock functionality, sleep data and health data. iM exPecting keep track of everything thats happening to you and your baby with 24/7 access to your information both from your phone and online. www.healthymagination.com
www.sas.com/sascom
GE healthcare: IMaGInatIon at work

As the world moves toward the digital hospital, GE is leading the way with technological breakthroughs in patient monitoring, imaging and information delivery. Here are just a few: handheld ultrasound. named one of Time magazines inventions of the year when it was introduced, GEs Vscan puts the power of ultrasound imaging technology in the palm of a doctors hand. turning x-rays into light. Building upon the natural properties of garnet, GE scientists have created a new material, making the worlds first high-definition CT scanner possible.
MARk VACHON, Former President and CEO of GE Healtchare
a reVolution in woMens health care. GEs magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound offers an alternative to invasive surgical procedures commonly used to treat uterine fibroids. www.ge.com/products_services/healthcare.html
litigation. The problem is exacerbated by ineffective reporting tools. Many hospitals still rely on paper, spreadsheets or first-generation event reporting systems. Even if you could change the cultural dynamic, it would still be problematic. Thats why we formed the patient safety organization, which puts a cloak of anonymity around the information so that we can, without fear of retribution among practitioners, extract near-miss data and analyze it to find root causes, share data and prevent future events. With a history in the business process strategy Six Sigma, as well having the resources to collect and store large amounts of detailed data, GE Healthcare and SAS are well-equipped to manage the data volumes needed for effective analytics that deliver statistical significance. There are three fundamental pillars for successfully attacking the problem of medical error, explains Vachon. The first is a bestin-class event reporting system; we have that in the system we call MERS: Medical Event Reporting System. It was developed at Columbia University and really does provide the best solution for capturing the level of detail required for effective analysis. The second is analytics. Im excited about the relationship we have with SAS in this area. We had to have a world-class company that
lives and breathes analytics like SAS. And the third piece is our consulting capability to take data and turn it into real change. According to Vachon, GEs PSO members will collect and report patient event data securely over the Internet through MERS, so it can be accessed and analyzed using SAS Analytics. Hospitals will be able to access a database of de-identified data to generate prebuilt and customized reports to compare themselves to peers, providing analysis and insight that was not possible before. SAS is providing two basic services for the PSO, explains Vachon. We typically think of SAS as the analytics part, but hosting the event data in the SAS Solutions OnDemand Cloud Computing Center and profiling it are going to be real differentiators for us. Our organizations have a long history in health care; theres a certain level of trust that has already been built. I think its incredibly important for hospitals to know they have partners they can trust. And, Vachon points out, early PSO results have been more than encouraging. On average, were seeing a tenfold increase in the number of events being captured by MERS. This is the basis for preventing future events, he says. We had one hospital CEO tell us that shes addicted to the system. It gives her staff a chance to take action
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Whether its patient workflow, tracking, technology or asset management, it all has a connection to safety and quality this is going to be the center of it all.
Mark Vachon, forMer President and ceo of ge healthcare
based on real data. Administrators are provided a window into the complexity thats involved with both near misses and events. And while it takes a sophisticated solution, knowing that and having the tools is a real liberator to making a difference. This is just one of many elements we plan to deploy against the very serious topic of patient safety and medical events, he continues. Whether its patient workflow, tracking, technology or asset management, it all has a connection to safety and quality this is going to be the center of it all.
aging global population. Even if we wanted to care for all these patients in hospitals, we couldnt afford to. Delivering care where its most appropriate will be important in terms of cost and quality in the future. In terms of informatics, he concludes, it will become more critical for information to follow a patient, so that all caregivers in the ecosystem understand who the patient is and whats been done. This level of optimization will ultimately provide patients with access to cost-effective, quality health care. n
1
The evolution of health care

When asked for his vision of health care in the future, Vachon ponders the question for a moment and says: If you reflect on the origin of the hospital, it was where all care was delivered. As a result, those structures have become quite costly over time. As well, making sure that the right care was performed in the right facility became misaligned. If someone had a minor procedure performed at a hospital, it may not have been the most appropriate, cost-effective method of delivery. While the hospital will certainly continue to play a vital role in the future, it will be part of a broader health care ecosystem for delivery and care. We see the migration of patient care out of hospitals and into clinics and homes, he continues. One reason is the developing tsunami of chronic care, driven by disease manifestations and the
Performance Solutions, led by President and CEO Jan de Witte, is a division of GE Healthcare, launched in July 2010 as an end-to-end knowledge solutions business, dedicated to helping health care systems globally to reduce unnecessary waste and create safer, more efficient patient care. Following the move of Mark Vachon to GEs Ecomagination team, GEHC Americas is now led by President and CEO Marcelo Mosci.
[author bio] John Quinn is a freelance writer who frequently contributes to sascom. transistorjq@me.com nline Lifesaving analytics: www.sas.com/sascom-lifesaving Health care experts on analytics: www.sas.com/sascom-hcwebcast
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GaP
3 EssEntIals oF MarkEtInG analytIcs to takE you FroM thEory to ExEcutIon
brIdGInG thE
MarkEtInG
verybodys talking about customer analytics and how it can help companies market more effectively.
But for many marketing professionals, theres a gap between theory and execution and its getting wider every day. Marketers know, in theory, that gaining insight from the incredible explosion of new digital information being generated, collected and stored requires analytics. And its this insight that marketers
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desperately need to keep up with todays tech-savvy consumers as they comparison shop online, blog and tweet reviews that can influence millions and use spam filters to avoid marketing they dont want to receive. If marketers dont deliver product and service information to consumers thats personally relevant, timely and delivered via their preferred channels, theyll ultimately drive them away. To be effective in this new environment, organizations must base their marketing processes and strategies on an analytical framework. Here are the three essential components you need to get started:
Targeting segmentation identifies customers with specific needs and preferences. Not all customers may be included and customers can fall into multiple segments. This type of segmentation is useful for specific marketing programs and campaigns, and identifies customer segments that are most likely to respond positively or customers most likely to leave for a competitor. It is focused on shortterm marketing activities that deliver highly relevant messages and offers to recipients. Analytics enables you to go beyond foundation segmentation to targeting segmentation, allowing you to execute more effective, sophisticated campaigns with messages and offers that are highly relevant to recipients.
toP bEnEFIts oF MarkEtInG analytIcs

increase response rates,
customer loyalty and ultimately RoI by contacting the right customers with highly relevant offers and messages.
Reduce campaign costs

by targeting customers most likely to respond.
decrease attrition
by accurately predicting customers most likely to leave and developing the right campaigns to retain them.
onE: Analytically driven customer segmentation

Customer segmentation is a basic component of most modern marketing strategies. The process involves dividing a customer base into groups of individuals who are similar in specific ways that matter in the context of your marketing programs. It enables companies to target groups effectively and allocate marketing resources appropriately. The overall benefits of segmentation include: profitable campaigns that focus on customers most likely to buy a product or service; identification of the most and least profitable customers; and more loyal customers, which leads to higher customer value and increased profits. There are two types of segmentation to consider: foundation and targeting segmentation. Foundation segmentation creates core segments that enable marketers to deliver consistent marketing treatments as part of a long-term customer strategy. All customers must be included, but each can fall into only one segment. Some of the key attributes of foundation segments include: value, profit, attrition, risk and demographics.
two: Predictive modeling

To know what customers will do in the future, marketers have to understand what they did in the past. Predictive analytics provide insight into the behavior patterns of a companys best and worst customers. By having insight into customer attitudes, behavior, profitability and risk, marketers can make better decisions to improve marketing outcomes. The goal is to use one or more predictive modeling techniques to identify target populations that are likely to respond positively to a specific campaign or marketing activity. Predictive modeling is also used to understand target group behavior, including which customers are likely to leave, while helping marketers to identify the most appropriate marketing treatment to use for specific customer communications. Consider what happens when a telecommunications company does a normal random marketing mailing versus a mailing based on predictive modeling. In this example, the company uses predictive
deliver the right message

by segmenting customers more effectively and better understanding target populations.
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modeling to generate the graph below, which analyzes the first decile of customers (the top 10 percent by revenue) and shows that 30 percent of these customers have a high likelihood of attrition a key group of customers for any company to focus its retention efforts on. The graph also helps the marketing department focus its retention activities on key target segments (and save the money to spend elsewhere). Failing to target funds in this way leads to diminishing returns but getting it right means the telecommunications company benefits from: Increased response rate by contacting the right customers. Reduced campaign cost by selecting the customers most likely to respond. Stronger customer relationships by understanding the target population and conveying messages that are highly relevant to it.
thrEE: Marketing optimization technologies

Issues such as competing divisional business goals, managing multiple marketing programs against constraints such as channel capacity, budgets and customer contact policies and internal politics can make decisions about which campaigns to send to which customers very difficult, especially for multiproduct companies. Factoring in and weighing all of these variables requires far more than just experience and human intuition. Marketers need optimization, a technologybased solution that applies mathematical techniques to maximize economic outcomes by making the most of each individual customer communication. For example, by using what-if analysis, marketers can increase campaign ROI by analytically determining the right offers for the right customers, by taking into account things such as customer preferences, propensities, profitability, costs and contact policies. Targeting offers will effectively lead to higher response rates, improved channel effectiveness and reduced spending. It also means fewer deleted e-mails and fewer unwanted direct mail solicitations. In addition, optimization analytics can help increase organizational efficiency by quantifying where changes in staffing and budget will really pay off, where money is being left on the table or where there is any unused capacity. Given the rapid changes occurring in the world of marketing, companies cant afford not to employ analytically driven
quEstIons you can answEr wIth PrEdIctIvE ModElInG

Why will my customer leave? When will my customer leave? Who can we retain? Who will buy? What will they buy? Which product will customers buy next? When will they buy?
PREDICTIVE MODELING can show how many customers have a high likelihood of attrition so that marketers can intervene.
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Percent likely to attrite
72% 62% 48% 30%

Targeting the top 10% of customer base captures 30% of those likely to attrite
marketing strategies and tactics. With an integrated analytical framework for customer intelligence, marketers can make smarter decisions, solve more business challenges and, ultimately, get more insight from customer data to drive optimal marketing performance. n
Customer base (deciles)
10
nline Marketers guide to analytics white paper: www.sas.com/sascom-mktguide Marketing analytics webcast: www.sas.com/sascomd-mawebcast
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FroM thE PrEMIEr busInEss lEadErshIP sErIEs
listen up
toP 10 lEssons
T
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
hey met in Berlin, Hong Kong and Las Vegas, a virtual Whos Who list of business, technology and government leaders: the first female US Secretary of State; the Chief Economist for the Australian Trade Commission; the Chief Advisor for the China Banking Regulatory Commission; the worlds foremost social media experts; celebrated CEOs, chairmen,
best-selling authors and more all to share vital information and lessons learned from centuries of collective business experience. If you werent able to attend in person, you can still see presentations and interviews online (see links at the end of this article). In the meantime, here are 10 gems worth repeating:
engaging consumers via social media is key. Look to the leaders and learn from them. Starbucks engages its customers to learn what works and doesnt work in its stores. Wet Seal uses mobile applications to engage the teen market. Build your social media strategy around three types of activity: listen, connect and publish. Listen using social media scanning tools; connect by commenting on blogs and participating in conversations; publish useful, informative and responsive content, Chris Brogan told Las Vegas attendees. theres a strong correlation between the use of analytics and better business performance. Even with the right information, it is still possible to make bad decisions. But with poor or no information, youre relying on intuition and luck, and the chances of making a bad decision go up significantly, best-selling author Tom Davenport told attendees in Berlin. Market share is the name of the game. And if you want to get market share, you have to raise productivity. Businesses need to use their cash to improve technology and buy software to raise productivity, said economist Sung Won Sohn in Las Vegas. Question what youre doing and why youre doing it. A retail CEO in Hong Kong shared his companys philosophy: Theres no one thing we can do that would sink the ship. Provocative is our new buzzword, and were questioning everything. We no longer assume the way its always been done is the way we should be doing it. to make the transition to an analytic company, start with one line of business. Marketing is a great place to begin. Use data to determine which customers to include in your next campaign. Move forward one department at a time. Pick areas that can show immediate results, promote the results and build momentum in the organization, said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight speaking to attendees in Las Vegas. three tips for doing more with less in it: rationalize and standardize; empower employees; and empower users. One CIO shared with audiences in Hong Kong how his organization standardized on SAS for business intelligence, allowing IT to outsource reporting to employees and users. This in turn has allowed IT to focus on high-level analytics. analyze early, analyze often. You have more information about your business than ever before; use it to outthink your rivals. Travel website Expedia told Las Vegas attendees how they use up to the minute analysis to optimize the way customers search results are sorted. The result? Increased bookings.
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avoid using technology for its own sake. Instead, always develop products that solve real customer problems. This was why so many of the dot-com companies failed, observed one CEO attending in Berlin. There must be a customer base. Products must solve real problems.
10
continue to learn and network. Attend conferences where you can meet other leaders, learn from them, their other organizations and other industries. Ask yourself: What are they doing today that we could be doing tomorrow? n
nline The Series 2011: www.sas.com/theseries Video, photos and more from The Series 2010: Berlin www.sas.com/sascom-berlin Hong Kong www.sas.com/sascom-hongkong Las Vegas www.sas.com/sascom-lasvegas
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for life
kEEPInG you covErEd
Max new york life knows how to build on existing relationships
www.sas.com/sascom
In the first quarter after implementing SAS, sales to existing customers jumped to more than 20 percent.
n Indias recently liberalized life insurance market, fast-growing Max New York Life (MNYL), a joint venture of two leading global businesses (Max India Limited and New York Life International), has adopted SAS technology to help strengthen customer retention and
cross-selling to a tightly segmented customer base. With SAS as the heart of its marketing process, Max New York Life has access to the right data, the right models, and the right execution. As a result, high-margin revenue from cross-selling has tripled. Since its inception in 2000, MNYL has recognized that, even as it continues to grow, the greatest revenue opportunity lies within its current customer base, which was vulnerable to exceptional levels of churn. According to Nagaiyan Karthikeyan, PhD, Head of Business Intelligence and Analytics, there were two major challenges. First, we wanted to be able to identify our best customers and ensure we take appropriate steps to retain them, he said. But beyond just keeping them, we want to expand our relationship with them our share of wallet. These are mutually beneficial aims because, by selling more products and services, we improve the likelihood that the customer will remain with us.
raIny day covEraGE

Max new york Life insurance earned its place in the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the worlds largest umbrella. This record-setting collapsible umbrella is almost as wide as the dome of Taj Mahal and as high as a three-story building. its sweeping 54-foot diameter by 32-foot height can provide cover to about 200 people. The largest umbrella in the world justifies Max new york Lifes tagline of Karo Zyaada Ka iraada. (in partnership with you for life to get you more) it also signifies protection from uncertainties of weather; just like life insurance which provides protection from uncertainties of life, said Anisha Motwani, Chief Marketing Officer, Max new york Life insurance. www.sas.com/sascom-photo
not just retention expansion

Previously, MNYL found that a mere 7 percent of new revenue came from cross-sales to existing customers and only 1 percent of customers owned two or more MNYL policies. While those figures are consistent with a fast-growing enterprise, they still represented an important opportunity for improvement. Sales cycles to existing customers are faster, Karthikeyan noted, and the average premium amount is often 30 to 40 percent higher. Plus, weve found that the retention probability for a customer goes up 300 to 400 percent once they make a second purchase with us. We were eager to get momentum in these areas, since it would be a more profitable way to grow our business. Achieving these ambitious targets started with one important
objective: a centralized repository of customer data. Getting that single view of the customer meant pulling all of our data into a unified data warehouse, Karthikeyan explained. Wed then need to give our business users the right analytic tools to make good, strategic decisions. But, from a tactical level, addressing the quality of the data was essential for executing our selling initiatives. Address and contact data in India is notoriously inconsistent, so to make cross-selling feasible, we needed to ensure we knew the correct addresses and phone numbers.
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SAS: The heart of the marketing information flow

Seeking the right technology foundation to aggregate and clean the data, build models, analyze data sets, and manage campaigns, MNYL turned to SAS. The company acquired a suite of SAS solutions. SAS is the heart of our marketing process, said Karthikeyan. We use it to clean our data and pump the right information to the right people at the right time so that they can make the right decisions. Because of these predictions and forecasts, SAS is removing a lot of the guesswork. One of the key advantages that SAS provides is improved speed and
4 stEPs to fact-based decisions

A shift from gut- to fact-based decision making requires business analytics (BA). Before you purchase BA technology, there are four steps you should consider: 1 Start at the top. Senior executives need to optimize business performance through quantitative measurements and fund and prioritize analytics projects. 2 Focus on the talent. demand is high and supply is low, so hiring analytical talent can be costly. Another option is to train internal staff or hire contractors. 3 Structure the team. dont place your new analytics team under iT or a Bi unit. Analytics experts say that most successful analytics initiatives take a decentralized approach. 4 Get your data in order. Weve all heard the phrase garbage in, garbage out, and nowhere does it apply more than when prepping for an advanced business analytics software project. www.sas.com/sascom-baebook
precision. Before, we needed at least three weeks just to build a model, he said. Now, we can build and run a model in two days. Whats more, were able to target our customer segments much more logically and granularly. Weve identified about 25 separate cells, and we see their demographics and previous transaction behaviors. That lets us tailor specific cross-sell offers and script different contact scenarios based on their value, their propensity to buy, their propensity to pay, and their propensity to lapse. Previously, we conducted two broadly targeted campaigns each quarter. Now, with these tightly defined customer segments, clean data, campaign management and rapid modeling, were executing 60 separate campaigns a month. Thats a level of agility that we directly attribute to SAS. Through this broad initiative, MNYL has achieved remarkable improvements in retention and cross-selling. Earlier, only 7 percent of revenue came from existing customers. In the first quarter after implementing SAS, sales to existing customers jumped to more than 20 percent, Karthikeyan said. Depending on how the macro economy performs, we think we can get that number closer to 25 or 30 percent. Our senior management team is very pleased with that performance.
Revealing business insights

According to Karthikeyan, SAS has made a fundamental difference in the success of Max New York Life. SAS shows us the business insights more clearly, he said. We might have hunches and gut instincts on what we should do. But now we have the data to back up that intuition. For instance, our lowest 9 percent of our customer base only contributes 1 percent of our revenue thats something we didnt know before, and now we can act on this knowledge with confidence. These are the types of things that never would have come to light without SAS. SAS helps us ask the right questions and get the right answers. This has been an ideal solution for Max New York Life, and I would strongly recommend it to other enterprises. If youre in an environment that changes
constantly, where the decisions you made three months ago are no longer valid, you need a system that can provide senior management with timely data and insightful analyses. Thats what SAS has been able to provide our organization. n nline Q&A with Max New York Life execs: www.sas.com/sascom-qa Business Analytics Knowledge Exchange: www.sas.com/sascom-bake
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going social
thE orGanIc way
FroM sEntIMEnt analysIs to PrEdIctIvE roI, dIGItal advErtIsInG aGEncy
orGanIc GIvEs clIEnts socIal MEdIa MEasurEMEnts that MattEr
hat if you could predict within a day or two of launching it what the long-term results of your social
media campaign would be? What if you could use that prediction to direct and improve the campaign on the fly? Organic is helping brands do just that with SAS Analytics. Here, Jonathan Prantner, Manager of Statistics for Organic, explains how statistical methods like sentiment analysis and velocity and acceleration calculations inform his clients digital marketing decisions. A lot of traditional marketers heads are still spinning over this new era of social media engagement. Im wondering as a digital marketing agency was social media marketing and measurement a natural transition for you? prantner: From a marketing point of view, social media is the next logical extension for us. Organic has a long history around marketing mix work with direct-response mediums.
Jonathan Prantner, Manager of Statistics for Organic
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Social media offers an outlet for branding messages and brand experiences that dont have an immediate impact on purchases. Social media measurement is tricky in much the same way that tracking how TV advertisements relate to sales has always been tricky. Historically, measuring awareness-building activities and tracking how they affect your brand has relied a lot on surveys, which allow you to gauge those changes in awareness. But theyre generally very slow-moving and one-off processes. However, social media allows for much more reflective and reflexive measures. Using responses to measure your impact helps you calculate a real-time impact to see how marketing efforts are affecting brand awareness and consideration. What concerns do your clients have about adding social media to their marketing mix? prantner: People are definitely more excited about it, but measurement and ROI are big issues right now with clients. Clients are treating social media much the same way that traditional media was treated in the past: Its great. Its interesting. But we dont know what value it provides. We know we need to do it but we dont know what it means. Has your focus on digital measurement given you an edge over other agencies? prantner: I definitely think it has. Since we have a laser focus on the interactive piece, thats where we put effort on the way we tell our story. As a digital agency that seamlessly blends creative and predictive intelligence, we have carved out a space for ourselves. It makes the conversation a little more equal when sitting at the table with other marketing partners.
Tell us about the velocity and acceleration
social media bEst PractIcEs

Chris Brogan, President of new Marketing Labs, recommends building your social media strategy around these three activities: LiSTEn using social media scanning tools to find out what people are saying. Track the sentiments in conversations. For example, how many customer service complaints are you finding via the Web? COnnECT by commenting on blogs and participating in conversations and not just to hawk your product or service. PUBLiSH useful, informational and responsive content via blogs, online newsletters, photos, slide decks and videos. www.sas.com/sascom-brogan
model that was mentioned in MIT Tech Review. prantner: That model is something thats fairly straightforward. It looks at the rates of change in how your social media imprint is growing. At the point when you examine results and youre able to see spikes in your increase, you look at the cumulative social imprint and look at first and second derivatives. When we see the spike, were able to relate the height of that spike to the ceiling that youll eventually see from that spike further on down the line. Take a Facebook ad. If you get a spike in new fans or likes the first day, were able to judge the long-lasting impact and predict how it will trail off in the future. When doing PR activities like events, we can use the same model to judge the success of that event not just based on that day but on the long-term impact of the event. For any campaign, based on what the overall goals are, you can use these measures to course-correct. What other ways are you using SAS to measure social media campaigns? prantner: Another method weve
developed with SAS is to use interactive and social media sentiment measurement as a proxy for consideration. If youre able to measure your imprint and your Web traffic, youre able to capture that for computation as well through social sites. We then distill that down into an overall consideration score. Essentially, clients can see how theyre gaining or losing compared to competitors. If your competitor had a market increase this month, we can see which social metrics are driving that.
www.sas.com/sascom
Can you provide an example of how this works? prantner: With a homebuilder client, we were able to link online consideration scores to the leads and inquiries that were generated by them. We were able to find that relationship and helped compare this with competitor sites, and estimated what lead volume competitors were receiving at the same time. Changes in customer habits helped inform the clients marketing plans. One of the main things we learned is that one of their competitors had artificially propped up their scores in a way that wasnt sustaining because it was driven by sweepstakes. This measurement helped influence the discussions about sweepstakes and the usefulness of those programs. Given all the different scenarios in a digital advertising agency, how important is the flexibility that you get from SAS? prantner: The great thing about SAS is that its so powerful and has such a broad offering. Youre able to have all these tools at your fingertips to develop distinct models for each part of the process. So, even just trying to capture the spread of a message, you may use one tool to deal with multiple social media and interactive touch points and then another for removing correlations between those touch points and looking at causes. Then, you can use a different area of SAS to develop models for ROI and another for forecasting models, yet its all self-contained. Once you build your data sets, you can slice it in so many different ways without having to switch from one software package to another. The other great thing is all the SAS user blogs and the wide reach of SAS, not only through SAS user groups, but the ability to sit in presentations from different industries and learn from what theyre doing. Sometimes I hear how the Census Bureaus or medical research companies are using SAS, and that outside perspective just fits perfectly for how were looking at customer life cycles in a different way. Thats one of the great things about working for something as broad as the consumer life cycle. Everything from Google to market basket analysis gives you a starting point. You just need code and a different way of looking at something than what you had originally thought. n nline 10 things you can do with social media analytics: www.sas.com/sascom-10sma Social medias business value: www.sas.com/sascom-smpanel
sEvEn stEPs to effective social media measurement

Katie Payne, CEO of KdPaine & Partners, shares battle-tested steps to an effective social media measurement system:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
DefIne the expeCteD ReSultS. As in traditional media, the goal determines the metrics. dEFinE THE inVESTMEnT. Social media is not free. The payback can be tremendous, but you do have to know what and where to invest. unDeRStAnD youR AuDIenCeS AnD whAt motIvAteS THEM. This knowledge determines which channels to focus on, what tone of voice to adopt, and what types of responses, offers and online content to provide. DefIne the metRICS. Click-throughs, number of friends, followers, comments metrics will vary by goal, audience and market. How do your social media metrics compare to your closest competitors? To performance last quarter or last year? PICk An AnAlytICAl tool AnD ConDuCt ReSeARCh. Mine useful insights from structured data (hits, unique visitors, etc.) and unstructured data (free-form text in comments, tweets, blogs, etc.). AnAlyze ReSultS AnD gleAn InSIght, tAke ACtIon, meASuRe AgAIn. do this in a continuously improving, closed-loop process.
DeteRmIne whAt you ARe BenChmARkIng AgAInSt.
www.sas.com/sascom-smmetrics
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9 to stEal
great ideas
SIze up youR CuStomeRS
margins and happier customers. www.sas.com/sascom-wetseal
Good artists copy. Great artists steal. see which of these blockbuster ideas you can put to work
At fashion-forward retailer The Wet Seal, having the right size in stock is critical because their inventory turns over two to three times faster than traditional retailers. Using SAS, Wet Seal knows which stores attract a lot of size 10s and which stores clientele favor size 4s. Result: Fewer empty shelves, fewer markdowns, better
AutomAte youR mARketIng

Using an integrated solution for predictive modeling, marketing automation and digital marketing, Elion, Estonias largest telco, grew average revenue per customer by 9 percent and reduced churn by 10 percent while slashing its marketing budget by 40 percent. www.sas.com/sascom-elion
OPTiMiZE LOGiSTiCS
foR BetteR mARgInS
To counter rising transportation and fuel costs related to cement production and sales in India, Jaypee Group uses SAS to determine the best mode and route for shipping products. The net ROI is huge its automated decision making in real time, says Jaypee CFO R.B. Singh. www.sas.com/sascom-jaypee
put puRChASeS unDeR the mICRoSCope

The Skanderborg District Council in Denmark used analytics to discover that employees were buying ink cartridges and toner from 25 different suppliers. More importantly, it used that information to consolidate its procurement spending, reducing its overall bill by 13 percent or US$11 million. www.sas.com/sascom-skanderborg
www.sas.com/sascom
AnAlyze In houRS, not DAyS

By analyzing sales patterns from more than 50 million records, CJ Internet decides what types of games to offer its subscriber base. Using SAS, the company can now analyze data in one hour (versus three days) and can stay competitive in the rapidly evolving online gaming world. www.sas.com/sascom-cjinternet
exAmIne SoCIAl netwoRkS to StAmp out fRAuD

Fraud among daycare providers and welfare recipients who enrolled children in nonexistent day care centers cost Los Angeles County millions a year. In a pilot program, the county used analytics to successfully identify fraudulent activity by looking at applicants social networks to spot patterns of fraud and collusion. Expected ROI: $7 million. www.sas.com/sascom-lacounty
get youR DAtA on DemAnD

Medical supply distributor McKesson has increased productivity and creativity by using SAS OnDemand to manage its data. Now analysts can quickly advise the business on critical topics like customer loyalty instead of spending time on tedious data preparation. www.sas.com/sascom-mckesson
pReDICt pRoBlemS BefoRe they BeCome loSSeS

Which customers are likely to default? Bank Islam wanted to know the answer before loans went sour. With SAS Credit Risk Management, the bank is spotting potential problems before they turn into losses, pricing products and services more competitively, improving the asset base, and producing regulatory and management reports quickly. www.sas.com/sascom-bankislam
RIght pRoDuCt, RIght plACe, RIght tIme, RIght CoSt

With predictive analytics, direct-selling giant Amway China has cut stock levels, balanced product distribution and boosted customer satisfaction to 97 percent. Replenishment time from logistics center to retail outlets has dropped 20 percent. www.sas.com/sascom-amwaychina
www.sas.com/sascom
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social innovation
In thE PublIc sEctor
sas execs carl Farrell and Mikael hagstrm on how governments around the world are using analytics to build a stronger future
ocial innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social
needs of all kinds from working conditions and education to community development and health. In this interview, Carl Farrell, Executive Vice President of SAS Americas, and Mikael Hagstrm, Executive Vice President of SAS Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, discuss the role of social innovation in the public sector.
carl farrell, Executive Vice President of SAS Americas
Mikael hagstrM, Executive Vice President of SAS Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific
www.sas.com/sascom
What major social issues are governments facing in the wake of the economic downturn? hagstrm: Overall, governments around the world are facing many similar issues. These include mounting program costs, aging populations, demands for improved infrastructures, pressure for government efficiency, transparency and the rebuilding of trust, increased demands for government services and an improved quality of life, and major reforms in education and health care all coupled with falling tax revenues and shrinking budgets. What are governments doing, for better or worse, to address these challenges? hagstrm: Government leaders are doing their best to predict future needs and trends, but as the pressure mounts, agencies, departments and ministries are responding to the volatility in different ways. Some countries are responding by halting programs or instituting cutbacks to alleviate anxiety, even if those actions negatively affect service levels or the countrys competitiveness. But some leaders and governments are using this period as an opportunity to build for a stronger future, and prepare to better support citizens whose needs will undoubtedly increase. These governments have started to capitalize on the digital economy and are using data to make decisions. It is my belief that analytics will open the door to the digital age. Analytics enables governments and organizations to increase their effectiveness, work more efficiently, and empower individuals and the organization. Are there specific social issues and approaches that well developed
economies like North America are still struggling with? farrell: In the US, as stimulus money wanes, most states face deficits in the billions of dollars. There is fear that will lead to extensive job losses and further damage the economy. Inevitably, social issues such as education reform, public assistance and health care could suffer. Analytics and fact-based decision making must be leveraged to help governments reduce costs, streamline processes and ensure programs and budgets are benefiting citizens. A resultsoriented approach to governing will be a priority for governments all around the world. Can you each give examples of governments that are using analytics to address some of these issues? hagstrm: In South Africa, the government is predicting national energy use and reducing tax fraud; in The Hague, theyre reaching climate neutrality; in Denmark, theyre slashing purchasing budgets; and in Sweden, theyre improving patient safety and reducing health care costs. And these are just a few examples of the amazing results were seeing. farrell: In California, Los Angeles County uses SAS to fight child care benefits fraud. North Carolina expects to save $25 million by fighting Medicaid Eligibility fraud with analytics. North Carolina is also increasing the safety of its citizens through a criminal justice and law enforcement data system that has already led to several arrests and increased efficiencies. On the education front, many states and school districts are now using value-added assessment to measure the effectiveness of schools and districts on student performance. In Latin America, one goverment has
reduced the tax return evaluation process from months to one week, and reliable tax refunds and a fair auditing process have improved citizen trust. In Canada, the Institute for Health Information uses SAS to create reports and analyses that help legislators gain a fuller understanding of key health care issues. What opportunities and challenges do you foresee for government leaders as they tackle social innovation? hagstrm: Their challenge as leaders is to focus on being proactive, and to re-imagine current challenges as opportunities to build a better future. As we enter the digital age, with everybody carrying networked, mobile devices and organizations being inundated with data beyond their previously imagined capacities to store it, analytics will become the great enabler for social innovation 2.0 and government transformation. By social innovation 2.0, I mean an era where the use of analytics in government can provide individual, real-time dialogue with each and every citizen. Its about using analytics to drive true insight into the needs of citizens, with a focus on increasing efficiency without compromising effectiveness. The ultimate goal is to meet citizen needs and expectations with less waste, reduced leakage and more efficiency. Closer interactions with citizens and a better understanding of citizen data can accomplish these goals while amplifying the voice of the citizen and making it easier for governments to capitalize on citizen ideas. farrell: Mikaels vision is spot on with what we see in the Americas. Transparency efforts have definitely amplified the voice of the citizen, to a deafening level. The flood of feedback is currently impossible for
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government to take in and respond, much less engage in real-time dialogue. This provides an opportunity to apply technologies that analyze structured and unstructured data from all sources, including mobile devices and the Internet. Text analytics, natural language processing, sentiment analysis and social network analysis can all offer insight with regard to many social and political issues. It will be critical for government executives to have the right tools so that they can gain value from the information and drive social innovation. Government is far behind almost every other industry, and is fighting needless internal battles just playing catch-up. Information is power, and a key opportunity for the government sector will be to use its information more effectively. To do this, it will need technology that ensures information is being managed to its maximum potential. What social innovations do you both predict or hope to see? hagstrm: What if we could improve preventative health care measures and allow patients to stay out of hospitals longer with an improved quality of life? What if we could be more proactive with our supply and demand of energy on a micro level to allow for increased consumption while also reducing production? What if we could treat terrorist threats the same way we treat financial fraud and reduce airport screenings the same way we deny credit card transactions? In these and many other areas of government, you can learn from the solutions that the private sector has already implemented using analytics. Individualized customer interactions in real time, supply chain optimization, risk management and preventative
maintenance are all solutions that private companies have successfully deployed and governments can emulate through public-private partnerships and innovation. farrell: I think many of the great social innovations will be powered by data integration and analytics. So much can be accomplished just by breaking down walls between data holders. Governments can gain a holistic view of all the ways they touch a person taxes, social services, public health, licensing, courts, etc. This will help agencies reduce fraud and redundant services, and improve overall efficiencies in serving citizens. There will be advanced bio-surveillance systems that integrate data from the environmental, animal and human clinics, and the food supply chain to rapidly detect emerging health threats and improve dayto-day situational awareness. Law enforcement, criminal justice agencies and fusion centers are sharing data as never before, leading to more arrests, exposure of criminal networks and a safer public. Obtaining the right information at the right time is not only helping to identify crime hot spots but even stopping a crime from having ever been committed. Better-coordinated disaster relief, tailored individual medical treatment options and analysis of citizen sentiment to empower policy-making are all happening in some form and will be improved in the near future through data integration and analytics. Any final thoughts on this topic? hagstrm: The most important thing is not only to capture information and knowledge about citizens but also to use it wisely and fairly to take action and make improvements in society. As the global economy evolves
and opens the door to what might become a new digital economy, leaders must ensure that citizens remain safe, that the quality of life improves, that appropriate responses are planned for changing demographic challenges, and that resulting regulation is pragmatic and embracing while also eradicating deficits. Analytics can serve as the entry point for capitalizing on data that is already available. With these insights, government leaders can not only remove current performance deficits, but also transform the public sector and prepare local economies to be more competitive and do that in an inclusive and transparent way that builds trust and faith in the future. farrell: Of all the industries SAS serves, the public sector is in the best position to use analytics to make real, positive change in peoples lives. However, governments bear the greatest burden in functioning as responsible stewards of data. Thoughtful, forward-looking laws and regulations must be in place that not only consider todays data challenges, but also the ones that will exist five, 10 or 20 years hence. This sort of visioning is difficult to capture in legislation, but is essential to protecting citizen information, ensuring proper levels of privacy and earning the trust of the public. The easiest way to earn that trust is to have early successes successes that not only lead to improvements in quality of life, but reduce deficits. n nline Download SAS special report on government: www.sas.com/sascom-govtrep Government agencies using analytics: www.sas.com/sascom-govtsuccess
www.sas.com/sascom
nline OuR FAVORITE WEB RESOuRCES
SAS ACquIRES ASSETLINk
THE NEW CONVERSATION

Harvard Business Review study shows how companies are taking social media from talk to action. www.sas.com/sascom-harvard
Customers gain the most powerful, comprehensive integrated marketing management platform on the market. www.sas.com/sascom-assetlink
GOVERNMENT INSIGHTS
Special report on challenges and opportunities for using analytics in the public sector. www.sas.com/sascom-govt
ITS SWEET TO REPEAT
SAS is again No.1 on Fortunes 100 Best Companies to Work For list. www.sas.com/sascom-fortune
THE FuTuRE OF FRAuD DETECTION

CNA insurance companies useSAS to detect fraud networks across multiple claims. www.sas.com/sascom-fraud
MARkETING IN THE AGE OF MACROWIkINOMICS

Best-selling author Don Tapscott on his latest book, Macrowikinomics, mega-trends and digital marketing. www.sas.com/sascom-tapscott
A MILLION LITTLE DECISIONS

Tips on improving decision making from analytics expert James Taylor. www.sas.com/sascom-decisions
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the Best of Blogs BLOGS.SAS.COM
why the Fortune 'best companies to work For' award matters in social media
Jim Davis shares employee reactions to SAS ranking No. 1 on the Fortune list for the second year in a row
f you follow SAS news at all, you probably noticed that SAS ranked No.1 on the Fortune 2011 Best Companies
"I will personally tell you that one of the greatest benefits is not all of the perks, but that SAS fosters a culture that thrives on collaboration and innovation, and allows us to individually influence decisions that make us the best analytic partner we can be for our customers." "We have a work environment that lets us get our jobs done with fewer distractions, less time away, and less stress. That means we can focus on delivering better software to our customers." I've talked a lot in my blog about the importance of trusting employees to participate in social media channels and to represent your brand fairly and honestly in open forums. We have the same faith that employees will say positive things when they fill out the surveys from Fortune magazine (two-thirds of the award ranking is based on employee surveys). The quotes I've read online from our employees over the past few days say it all. If you set up a culture of trust and respect, those same attitudes will be reflected in the way your employees represent your company online. Every day, our employees are answering customer questions, providing help where needed and acting as brand ambassadors on Twitter, LinkedIn and many other sites in the same way they talk about the Fortune award. They're excited to do it, and proud to represent SAS online and off. Finally, I'm convinced that workplace recognition and revenue growth are not coincidental. SAS continues to prove year in and year out that treating employees well is good business, and social media makes that even more transparent. n
From FORTUNE Magazine, February 7, 2011 2011 Time Inc. FORTUNE is a registered trademark of Time Inc. and is used under license. FORTUNE and Time Inc. are not affiliated with, and do not endorse prudcts or services of, Licensee.
to Work For list for the second year in a row. Last year, when Fortune honored SAS with the title, I provided my "so what?" perspective, explaining why employee perks really matter and how they contribute to the bottom line success of SAS. This year, as Ive been talking to colleagues and reading employee reactions to the news, Im struck by the level of sincere enthusiasm that employees are expressing about the award. Reactions on social media sites are especially strong and characteristic of the pride that SAS employees have for this company and the work they do here. On Jim Goodnight's Facebook fan page, employees are saying: "Still Crazy Good....after all these years! 18 for me and it keeps getting better." "Best place ever to work, play, and be creative. Thank you Dr. Goodnight." "Congratulations and thank you for your vision which continues to make SAS so successful." On the SAS blogs, employee bloggers told personal stories about what the award means to them:
JIM DAVIS, SAS
nline Jim Davis blog, In Other Words: Blogs.sas.com/jimdavis Fortunes No. 1 place to work: www.sas.com/sascom-fortune
www.sas.com/sascom
conference series
Analytics2011
October 24-25, 2011 J.W. Marriott Hotel Orlando, FL

Looking for the latest trends in analytics? The Analytics 2011 Conference has them! Join hundreds of analytics professionals for two days of insightful sessions, networking and hands-on training. Analytics 2011 topic areas include:
Data mining. Forecasting. Text analytics. Fraud detection. Data visualization. Predictive modeling. Data optimization. NEW! Operations research. NEW! Credit scoring.
View an up-to-date list of speakers, abstracts and special events at www.sas.com/analyticsseries.
Presented by
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. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright 2010, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. S62079_0910
SAS Fraud Management Detection and Alert Generation | Social Network Analysis | Case Management Targeted Solutions for Banking, Insurance, Government and Health Care
What if you could analyze 87% more data in the same time you do now - to detect fraud faster?
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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. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. 2011 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. S66542US.0211

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sascom

Bringing data to the

Inventing a healthier future

second quarter 2011

THE PREMIER BUSINESS LEADERSHIP SERIES

Premier Speakers. Premier Audience. Premier Leadership.

contents SECOND quARTER 2011 coVer

19 Bridging the marketing gap

24 keeping you covered for life

27 going social the organic way

30 nine great ideas to steal

32 social innovation in the public sector

On the cover: Mark Vachon, GE Photo by Steve Muir

whos who and where to find them.

Amy Dyson, Trey Whittenton

Anna Brown, Ann Culp

Ellen Brandt, Diana Christofferson

Marchellina Waugh Melody Fountain

John Fernez, Steve Muir

SAS welcomes letters to the editor.

2 sascom second quarter 2011

coluMn TECH HIGHLIGHT

its like creating a sculpture

Is it an enterprisewide promotion or a brand-building task? A one-time mailing or an integrated campaign? A one-day

Know what you have been commissioned to sculpt.

Find the right piece of marble or wood.

PrEcIsE ModElInG = ProFItabIlIty

Polish and present your creation.

Chip away at everything t hat imprisons the figure.

4 sascom second quarter 2011

coluMn RISk MANAGEMENT

ready to take the data challenge?

DAVID ROGERS, SAS

The data officer-in-chief

Asking the right questions

The view from the top

data qualIty: thrEE tIPs For GEttInG startEd

6 sascom second quarter 2011

coluMn BuSINESS ANALYTICS

a cIo perspective on using analytics

NIEL NICkOLAISEN, ENERGY SOLuTIONS INC.

Ask the right questions

A decision-support case study

network to connect these people with trusted product advisors.

Focus on the right marks

Know your customer segments

FIvE rEasons to joIn IIa

implement decision support

8 sascom second quarter 2011

coluMn PARTNER INSIGHTS

Moving from bI to advanced analytics

BILL FRANkS, TERADATA

Setting up your analytics sandbox

A foundation for advanced analytics

10 sascom second quarter 2011

Avoiding analytic pitfalls

sas and tEradata: advancEd analytIcs In actIon

sas and tEradata: onE ProGraM, thrEE PowErFul analytIc PackaGEs

12 sascom second quarter 2011

Founded by top analytics researcher Tom Davenport

Save 30% on your individual membership fee.

14 sascom second quarter 2011

Healthymagination: cost, quality and access