LAS VEGAS — Business intelligence vendor SAS said that AEGON Direct Marketing Services Inc., one of the world’s largest DMers of life and supplemental health insurance products, selected SAS and its SAS Customer Intelligence software as the company’s marketing and business intelligence platform, displacing a number of systems.
SAS, Cary, NC, also said yesterday that The Children’s Place Retail Stores Inc., a leading specialty retailer of children’s merchandise ages newborn to 10, uses SAS to help determine pricing, optimize assortment planning and enhance marketing campaigns.
The Children’s Place, which operates 750 Children’s Place stores and 300 Disney stores in North America, will use SAS to help drive sales.
The announcements came at the BetterManagement LIVE Worldwide Business Conference, which addresses business management issues. BetterManagement LIVE unites 1,000 attendees from the public and private sectors to share insights and knowledge. More than 85 speakers in seven focused tracks represent a spectrum of executives, academics, consultants and financial experts.
In a multi-year deal, AEGON will implement SAS software ranging from SAS Marketing Automation and SAS Activity-Based Management to SAS Interaction Management and SAS Enterprise BI Server. AEGON already relies on SAS Marketing Optimization software to fine-tune its marketing campaigns.
The SAS solutions will provide crucial customer intelligence while helping AEGON consolidate its varied marketing systems into a single, integrated suite of software products. This integration will help AEGON align and improve operations among its four U.S. locations so it can deliver a single, consistent view of each customer and prospect for all campaigns.
As for The Children’s Place, assortment planning was identified as an area in which analytics could improve performance. SAS is letting the company more effectively target merchandise assortments to different consumer groups.
At the conference, SAS also announced it is launching a global Business Intelligence Competency Center program. Designed to help organizations worldwide create a cohesive enterprise intelligence strategy for better decision making, the program will offer a comprehensive mix of services to empower organizations to maximize their investment in BI technology and strengthen their competitive advantage.
SAS said a BI Competency Center is a permanent formal organizational structure consisting of representatives from business and IT that seeks to advance the effective use of business intelligence to support an organization’s business strategy. Such as center provides benefits including:
* Heightened credibility and confidence in enterprise information.
* Increased use of business intelligence throughout the organization.
* Accelerated and effective decision making.
* Optimization of resources and decreased cost.
* Innovation of business processes through technology.
SAS paid part of Melissa Campanelli’s transportation to attend the conference.
