U S WEST Selects New Marketing Automation Component of SAS Solution for CRM.

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 7, 1998--

Choosing SAS Institute 

products and expertise for customer relationship management (CRM)

SAS Institute Inc., the market leader in data warehousing and decision support, today announced that U S WEST, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies with more than 20 million customers, has selected SAS Institute's marketing automation server software to reinforce its already formidable customer-relationship management program.

Now generally available, the SAS Institute server for VALEX(tm) software is the first marketing-automation component of the SAS(R) Solution for CRM.

The server links software and models generated from SAS(R) Enterprise Miner(tm) data mining software with the VALEX campaign-management software from Exchange Applications, Inc. in Boston, to create the first complete CRM solution. The CRM solution integrates sophisticated predictive modeling and campaign management into a dynamic, automated customer value scoring capability. The SAS Solution for CRM gives companies a complete picture of the customer by continually gathering data from all customer contact points. This information is used to understand and predict customer behavior, needs and profitability via data mining and is then fed back to customer contact points. This information helps to measure the effectiveness of marketing activities by using reporting tools that allow continuous refinement of CRM activities.

Why integrate data mining and campaign management?

Data mining is the process of selecting, exploring, and modeling large amounts of data to uncover previously unknown patterns of data to gain a business advantage. Campaign management software allows marketing professionals to plan, build, execute and assess targeted marketing campaigns. Integrating data mining and campaign management software eliminates the need for marketers to score entire customer databases (which is very time consuming), reduces manual intervention and human error, substantially shortens marketing cycles and enables smaller, highly-targeted segmentations to generate a higher marketing ROI.

Via SAS Institute's marketing automation server and an Exchange Application's add-on component called Model Connect, VALEX software users can now invoke models generated by SAS Enterprise Miner, and dynamically score only the records needed for a specific campaign. The result: marketers can continually refine targeted campaigns for faster, better results (e.g. improved marketing ROI).

U S WEST - a study in optimizing customer relationships

The marketing automation server is a key component of U S WEST's state-of-the-art Customer Relationship Management Strategy (CRMS) system - a worldwide best practice CRM program for increasing customer loyalty through continuous 1:1 customer-management processes. U S WEST's database marketing professionals implement tightly focused campaigns by using the VALEX software system to access pre-calculated models generated by Enterprise Miner software.

"This integration of Enterprise Miner software with the marketing automation server will do for marketers what Excel did for spreadsheet users," said Dennis DeGregor, vice president of relationship marketing at U S WEST's headquarters in Denver, CO and chief strategist for its CRMS system. "We will maximize rates of customer retention and cross selling by quickly determining whether a campaign is working and quickly shifting gears. This is certainly a more `intelligent' basis for campaign management; it shortens the cycle time for both campaigns and for sophisticated analysis."

Dr. Jovan Barac, U S WEST's director of decision support systems, has successfully transformed the U S WEST modeling and scoring paradigm from a set of ad hoc techniques to a unified environment. "We're now able to production score more than 10 million customers," he said. "A world-class decision support system and its integration with customer service and network and billing systems provide a strong infrastructure for the CRMS system. But integrated data mining and campaign management are its brain and heart."

The SAS Solution for CRM provides:

-- an award-winning set of capabilities for building/managing

Customer Information Warehouses.

-- predictive modeling capabilities for better customer

segmentation and targeting. Segmentation scores fed into SAS

customer-information warehouses from SAS software will give VALEX

software more focused, accurate list selections to work with.

-- dynamic scoring, which eliminates the need to model and score

entire databases. SAS software allows VALEX software to hone in

on which records within a database to score and when to score

them for maximum effectiveness.

-- post-campaign analysis via SAS Institute's OLAP technology.

Price and availability

Now available, the marketing automation server is the first CRM solution to integrate operational and decision-support systems for a true closed-loop approach. The solution calls for building and managing a customer database, and building and sharing customer intelligence through the Institute's marketing leading data mining and Web-enabled reporting capabilities. Results of the data mining analyses are then used to suggest promotions and programs designed to acquire customers, retain customers, and identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities that enhance customer profitability and lifetime value.

The marketing automation server is a component of the SAS Solution for CRM. Because all implementations are unique, software prices vary. Services, an integral part of the solution, are priced separately with a CRM assessment. Please contact the nearest SAS Institute office for more information.

VALEX campaign management software and Model Connect are purchased separately from Exchange Applications.

Consulting assistance available

SAS Institute consultants offer an integrated CRM solution that builds on an end-to-end data-warehouse infrastructure and more than two decades of solution-development expertise. Consultants provide tools and software applications that incorporate the Institute's step-by-step SEMMA (sample, explore, modify, model and assess) process for understanding large quantities of corporate data.

About SAS Institute Inc.

SAS Institute, one of the top 10 independent software vendors, 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 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 31,000 business, government, and university sites in over 120 countries. Founded in 1976, SAS Institute is the world's largest privately held software company with annual revenue of $750 million.

Please visit SAS Institute's Web site: http://www.sas.com.

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