SAS Institute Inc. And Ernst & Young LLP Power Enterprise CRM Solutions
SAS Institute Inc., a market leader in providing integrated data warehouse, data mining and decision support solutions for customer relationship management (CRM), has announced that SAS software will play an integral role in Ernst & Young's CRM technology solution for optimizing customer value.
This solution is based on Ernst & Young's award winning CRM methodology called Value Exchange Optimization, which combines Ernst & Young's proprietary CRM subject-matter expertise with top-shelf, complementary enabling technologies to help organizations make the most of customer relationships. By using SAS software as a part of its CRM solution, Ernst & Young will be able to successfully deliver robust data management and data mining capabilities, which bring the highest level of precision in strategic customer segmentation, valuation and other CRM activities.
"A critical step in an effective CRM strategy is to identify profitable customers," said John Distefano, partner-in-charge of data warehouse services at Ernst & Young, "That's why SAS software plays such a crucial role in our solution. It provides the analysis and decision support technology to assess current and potential value of customers. Many companies face a situation in which at least half of their customer base is unprofitable, so there's an immediate benefit to differentiating customer value. SAS software's sophisticated analysis and decision support capabilities are an investment in customer management that leads to more profitable - and through successful cross-selling and up-selling - expanded customer relationships."
"Customer value optimization is a major focus area for Ernst & Young, as evidenced by the measurement of client ROI from existing CRM initiatives," said Ellen Joyner, SAS Institute's program manager for CRM. "Ernst & Young selected SAS software's proven analytics to drive its unique point of view on creating and leveraging customer intelligence. This demonstrates Ernst & Young's continued commitment as a leader which is serious about providing the best technologies for its solution."
Installed at more than 33,000 sites world wide, including 98 percent of the Fortune 100, SAS software helps business users and IT departments support their organizations by providing an open solution for data warehousing, customer relationship management (CRM), decision support, business intelligence, and much more. Joint clients of SAS Institute and Ernst & Young, one of the world's leading consulting firms, will benefit from Ernst & Young's ability to quickly develop and implement a fully integrated, custom CRM solution, powered by SAS software's information delivery architecture. SAS software is being showcased along with complementary CRM technologies, such as Exchange Applications' VALEX Campaign Management software, at Ernst & Young's Advanced Development Centers throughout the U.S.
Ernst & Young LLP is one of the leading professional services firms, with 85,000 people at 87 locations throughout the United States. The firm has received several recognitions and awards for its investment in knowledge sharing, the latest technology, and for offering a variety of work/life balance programs for its people. Ernst & Young's talented professionals provide assurance and advisory business services, tax services and consulting for domestic and global clients.
SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held software company with 1998 revenue of $871 million, is the leader in decision support and data warehousing, providing integrated enterprise information-delivery solutions. The Institute markets packaged business solutions for vertical industry and departmental applications, as well as an integrated suite of software tools and consulting services, that allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organizations into information that business users and researchers need to make better decisions. SAS software and services are used at more than 33,000 business, government, and university sites in 115 countries.