Sales of SAS Customer Intelligence solutions went up by more than 25 percent worldwide last year, according to the business analytics software provider SAS, a leader in integrated marketing management.

Growth was driven by demand from marketing organizations for analytic solutions that help them better understand and engage with customers to attain profitable outcomes. SAS is also seeing strong demand from CMO's for improvements in operational efficiency, and the adoption of integrated marketing management.

"Marketers are awakening to the fact that successful integrated marketing necessitates a holistic view of the planning, operations, campaign execution, and analytic functions." said Wilson Raj, Global Product Marketing Principal for Customer Intelligence at SAS. "Smart organizations realize that they need to link, align, and synchronize both aspects of marketing - operational and campaign management functions - to not only create better customer experiences, but do so more efficiently and cost-effectively."

The company confirms as well that the growth of social media presents an opportunity for organizations to add to the intelligence they already collect from structured data sources.

Companies are turning to the recognized leader in analyzing structured data to bring the same rigor to unstructured data, and SAS® Social Media Analytics can help organizations extract and interpret information from unstructured data sources.

Combining intelligence from structured and unstructured data helps build the most complete picture possible of the customer, marketplace, category as well as competitive environment and applying predictive analytics to this data helps organizations make more informed business decisions.

The tough economic climate of the past few years has driven marketers to focus more attention on increasing operational efficiency, which will definitely continue even when the economy improves.

In general, SAS is seeing increased demand for analytic capabilities that support marketing by driving better planning, optimizing outcomes and measuring performance and you can expect to have their solutions SAS® Marketing Operations Management, SAS Marketing Mix Advisor, SAS Marketing Optimization, and SAS for Marketing Performance Management at hand in case you need them.

So far, SAS Customer Intelligence has proven to be one of the most comprehensive suite of integrated enterprise marketing solutions available on the market including SAS for Customer Experience Analytics, SAS Digital Marketing, SAS Marketing Automation and SAS Real-Time Decision Manager.

Well, it’s obvious that the transition to a customer-focused business strategy continues to gain momentum and Jim Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, SAS, has actually been the one guiding the company's focus to be customer-driven. Responsible for providing strategic direction for SAS products, solutions and services and presenting the SAS brand worldwide, he spearheaded the transformation of SAS from a tools provider to the software solutions provider it is today by building industry-specific expertise into SAS' product management and product marketing teams.

So, who could be better to give you an overview of SAS’s holistic approach to solving critical challenges across marketing – watch the video by clicking on the image:

By Roger Stadler