SAS honored with Business Intelligence Market Leader award from CRM magazine

For the sixth year in a row, SAS is recognized by CRM magazine for its industry-leading analytics and marketing automation capabilities

CARY, NC (Aug. 27, 2008) – For the sixth year running, CRM magazine has recognized SAS for its industry-leading business solutions. SAS was announced the winner in the business intelligence category of the CRM Market Awards and a CRM Market Leader for marketing automation.

The CRM Market Awards honor “vendors, consultants and end-user companies focused on creating and cultivating rewarding customer experiences and relationships through the sophisticated integration of people, processes and technologies.”

“No one’s surprised at SAS’ strong finish this year across multiple categories, including its outright win in Business Intelligence,” said Joshua Weinberger, managing editor of CRM. “Its depth and breadth is legendary, but it’s SAS’ commitment to innovation that really seems to have the most lasting impact on the marketplace. We inducted Dr. Jim Goodnight, the company’s founder, into the CRM Hall of Fame several years ago, and we’d probably induct him again if it were possible. He’s led this company to yet another year of sparkling growth, topped off by the acquisition of Teragram — a sign that SAS isn’t content to rest on its laurels, intent instead on driving these industries to new heights.”

Experts interviewed by CRM include David Kasabian, research director at AMR Research, who says that SAS® users are “fanatical” about SAS Business Intelligence solutions. Boris Evelson, principal analyst at Forrester Research, notes that SAS has “one of the best high-end analytics products on the market.” CRM cites SAS’ high ranking in customer satisfaction, its depth of functionality and its ease of integration as leading factors in this win. CRM writes, “Having focused on organic growth, SAS faces far fewer integration issues compared to other BI vendors that have, for example, partnered with SPSS.”

CRM applauds SAS Marketing Automation for meshing SAS’ “excellence in analytics and data to provide marketers with metric-based understanding. Its extensive expertise in horizontal (e.g., CRM and risk management) and vertical (e.g., financial services, education and public sector) industries make it a useful tool across the board.”

The CRM Market Leader Awards will appear in the September 2008 issue of CRM magazine.

An integrated suite of top-ranked marketing solutions

While many enterprise-marketing-management vendors are narrowly focused on point solutions, SAS provides a comprehensive suite of top-ranked products that span the entire customer-focused marketing process. SAS’ campaign management capabilities are part of a broader customer intelligence suite of solutions that handle campaign management, cross-sell/up-sell, customer retention, customer segmentation, e-mail marketing, event-driven marketing, campaign optimization, marketing-mix analysis, marketing performance management and Web analytics.

Customers worldwide using SAS to support customer initiatives include 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, American Honda Motor Co., The Dow Chemical Co., First Citizens Bank, Grupo Santander, Hartford Life, US Bank and Wolters Kluwer.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. With innovative business applications supported by an enterprise intelligence platform, SAS helps customers at 44,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know® . www.sas.com

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