AMS Forms Strategic Alliance with SAS Institute
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American Management Systems (AMS), an international business and information technology consulting firm, announced that it has signed a strategic alliance agreement with SAS Institute in Cary, NC. AMS and SAS Institute will collaborate on providing technology-based customer data analysis solutions for their clients across several industries, both in the U.S. and globally. This collaboration will particularly focus on the use of data warehousing, data mining, and decision support software to enable businesses to establish the operational environments required to better manage their customer relationships.
According to Steve Mutschler, vice president in charge of AMS's Customer Strategy Consulting practice, "SAS software provides the platform that we need in order to design and quickly implement the technology-based customer management systems demanded by our clients. SAS Institute's preeminent leadership, particularly in the area of data warehousing and decision support, complements AMS's industry expertise in defining and deploying large-scale business and technology change initiatives. Both firms have strong credentials helping companies reorient their businesses to emphasize customer relationship management."
Initially, AMS and SAS Institute will focus on integrating AMS's Strata Enterprise software product with newly released SAS Enterprise Miner. Strata Enterprise was developed by AMS to help clients execute and track complex customer management strategies. Most of the strategies that clients have deployed with Strata rely in part on analytical models created using SAS software. By integrating Strata with SAS software, clients will have a seamless environment in which to build, deploy, test and track the outcome of customer management strategies. This integrated environment will reduce the "time to market" for new strategies, and increase their effectiveness.
Wingate Swain, SAS Institute's director for market development, said, "We look forward to strengthening this alliance with AMS on many fronts. The AMS Center for Advanced Technologies (AMSCAT) provides an ideal showcase for demonstrating the value of SAS software for AMS's numerous customer management initiatives. For project teams working with client data and delivering actual solutions, the alliance ensures that clients get additional value for their investments."
SAS Institute provides an integrated suite of information delivery tools that allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organization into information that business users need to make decisions. To make data useful, SAS software collects data from almost every platform and data format; cleans and transforms data into information that users will understand; and stores that information in an open and efficient data warehouse structure. To explore this information, SAS software includes OLAP, query and reporting, EIS, data mining, analysis, data visualization, and application-development interfaces. SAS software is client/server and Web enabled. SAS Institute also delivers business solutions that are complete packages for financial consolidation and reporting, clinical trials analysis, oil and gas analysis, and IT service management. Currently, SAS software and business solutions are being used at 31,000 business, government, and university sites in more than 120 countries.
SAS Institute's Web site can be found at http://www.sas.com
AMS's consumer financial services practice specializes in customer management strategy and technology consulting for large institutions. The firm's interactive Customer Value Management (iCVM) methodology enables banks, retail investment firms and other financial services providers to enhance the value of customer relationships by linking customer management strategies with multi-channel customer contact processes. AMS's iCVM capabilities include business consulting, customer value analysis/predictive modeling and advanced technology integration capabilities, in addition to market-leading enterprise customer decision management and consumer credit management software platforms. AMS's finance industry clients include all of the top 10 US banks, several major Canadian banks, a number of leading brokerage and securities firms, and more than 150 major institutions around the world.
AMS can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.amsinc.com