SAS Releases Decision Hub Tool for Businesses

SAS added a new application to its lineup of customer service analytical offerings. SAS Real Time Decision Manager embeds analytically driven decision logic at every customer interaction.

The Decision Manager tool was introduced during Gartner's (NYSE: IT) CRM conference this week, along with an updated version of its Marketing Optimization application. The product will be shipped at the end of this year.

"The name [Real Time Decision Manager] is self explanatory," Andy Bober, the company's director of customer intelligence product, told CRM Buyer. "It is an application that sits behind a Web store -- or at a call center, or ATM, or point of sales -- and acts as a central decision hub by providing better recommendations based on the customer's request at that time and history."

Typical decisions include a recommendation on a customer's eligibility to receive a particular offer, or a calculation of a customer's credit worthiness. It can also score that customer's propensity to buy a certain item, or to leave a retailer altogether.

Pennywise and Still Foolish

For example, a bank may find itself in a situation where it may lose a profitable customer during a routine account check when he finds out he dropped below the minimum balance and as a result will be levied a fee.

Based on this new inquiry, the customer's past behavior (he joined that particular bank after leaving his previous bank irate for the same reason) and transactional history (he usually keeps his account much higher than the minimum), the decision flow would return a recommendation to waive the penalty.

The application can work as a stand alone implementation, Bober said, or as a complement to the company's Customer Intelligence Suite and Enterprise Intelligence Platform. Using it, a customer can gather and access information from any internal system within the enterprise and store it in one location.

It is managed by a graphical interface as opposed to being hard-coded in a call center or Web-based system, which means it is easy to update. Because it was written on a Java framework it is scalable and easy to integrate, Bober says.

Marketing Optimization

SAS has also upgraded its Marketing Optimization application with a new user interface, enhanced contact policy management tools -- providing such information as the amount of time that has transpired since the last contact -- and RSS and Dynamic Web Publication support. In addition, a digital content repository has been added to complement the in-line content editor that enables editing and testing of content for multiple channels simultaneously.

SAS said the changes were implemented in response to customer demand.

"We've seen an upsurge in interest from customers in marketing optimization capabilities in 2007," stated Jeff Levitan, general manager, SAS customer intelligence. "Increasingly marketers want new ways to get more return from existing technologies."