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Staples Wins E-Commerce Award Using SAS Analytics

SAS, a leader in business intelligence and data warehousing announced that its customer, Staples Inc has won the EC World-Class Performance award for its implementation of SAS analysis and integration technology. Electronic Commerce World magazine recognized five companies for successful implementations of e-commerce systems.

This year's awards went to office supplies retailer Staples Inc, defense industry manufacturer BlackHawk Industries Inc, apparel and accessories company Pacific Sunwear of California Inc, financial services firm InvestorForce and hardware industry buying cooperative Do it Best Corp.

"Each of these companies has shown noteworthy use of electronic commerce systems that have helped them stand out in their industries, even in tough economic times," says EC World managing editor Philip Burgert. "We believe they provide excellent examples of how companies can implement e-commerce strategies to improve their operations."

"We have integrated all customer and sales data from multiple channels in order to determine how customers migrate from one channel to another and what they are purchasing from the physical store versus what they are purchasing online," said Win Fuller, Staples' director of market analysis. "We've found that by moving customers from using one channel to using all three of our channels we get a very significant increase in the amount of the things that they buy from us. We also have been able to reduce our response time from minutes to seconds, maintain sales growth momentum and keep inventory at a minimum."

"Call data, mail-order addresses, sales histories, POS data and Web transactions ... Staples is successfully harnessing this wealth of data and turning it into business intelligence," said Anne Milley, SAS' director of Analytical Intelligence. "Analytic Intelligence enables Staples to direct customer activity to the most appropriate sales channels."

The magazine's editorial staff chose the five award winners after a review of proposals submitted during 2001. Staples, Framingham, Mass., profiled in the current issue of EC World, is using analysis and integration applications from SAS Institute to amalgamate sales data from a host of platforms and operating systems that support 1,400 North American retail outlets, a Web site, catalog business and in-store kiosks. In addition to supporting processing and data analysis of 600,000 daily transactions, the tools provide connectivity to dozens of databases that store customer-purchasing information.

About Staples

Staples Inc is an $11 billion retailer of office supplies, business services, furniture and technology to consumers and businesses from home-based businesses to Fortune 500 companies in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal. Headquartered outside Boston, Staples invented the office superstore concept and today is the largest operator of office superstores in the world. The company has over 50,000 employees serving customers through more than 1,300 office superstores, mail order catalogs, e-commerce and a contract business.

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.