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SAS Listed as a Leader in CRM Analytics Magic Quadrant

SAS, a leader in business intelligence, announced that it is listed as a leader in Gartner's new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Analytics Suite Magic Quadrant.

This Magic Quadrant focuses on vendors who target a broad range of analytic issues specifically in terms of a CRM application. SAS is listed in the upper right hand Leader quadrant based on vision and ability to execute.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant positions vendors in a particular market segment based on their vision and ability to execute that vision. Gartner evaluated 12 vendors for the first CRM Analytics Suite Magic Quadrant and placed SAS in the "leader's quadrant" for CRM analytics. Gartner defines the CRM analytical market as being comprised of those user organizations that seek a deeper and more complete understanding of their customers, or their customer's relationship with the user organization through the use of packaged applications. Leaders are vendors who are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.

According to a recent Gartner report, operational CRM investments in areas such as call centers and field sales have yet to produce a significant return on investment. The report stated, "Hoping to distill valuable insights from collected data, enterprises are now turning to CRM analytics. The economic downturn has increased pressure to achieve near-term results by leveraging available resources as much as possible. It has become critical to make more-efficient and effective resource allocations, and these depend on enterprises' ability to glean insights that can help improve operations or enhance sales effectiveness. During 2002, enterprises will seek to attain and leverage greater customer insight by redoubling their analytic efforts, granting broader and deeper access to the data, and exploring advanced data-mining techniques." (NOTE: Gartner report prepared by Gareth Herschel January 2002 "CRM Analytics Will Command Attention in 2002.")

"SAS' listing in the leadership quadrant is confirmation that SAS enables companies to create customer intelligence and leverage that insight into their CRM initiatives," said Jim Davis, senior vice president of marketing at SAS. "The creation of this new Magic Quadrant reflects Gartner's efforts to educate customers on the need to incorporate analytics into their CRM efforts."

SAS has the most complete solution on the market for supporting the entire decision-support process of managing customer relationships. You can collect data at all customer contact points and turn that data into knowledge for understanding and anticipating customer behavior, meeting customer needs, building more profitable customer relationships and gaining a holistic view of a customer's lifetime value.

The Gartner research note is available at: www.gartner.com/reprints/sas/104840.html.

About SAS

SAS is a market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 38,000 sites -- including 99 of the top 100 businesses on the Fortune 500 -- to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know. Visit us at www.sas.com.

Contact SAS Institute, Angela Lipscomb, 919-531-2525, Angela.Lipscomb@sas.com.