More: Watch videos from SAS on YouTube, watch full-length SAS Webcasts or learn more about The Premier Business Leadership Series (next stop: Vegas).

The Mobile Communications article, Why retailers need to be mobile for the 2010 holidays includes a lot of compelling reasons for taking your sites mobile. I pulled together a list of six reasons from that article plus a few other sources so you can see the full argument here in a quick, handy list:

1. Retail sales for mobile commerce in 2009 grew 117%, up from 57% in 2008, and will continue to increase throughout 2010.
   
2. For the first time there are more smartphones than desktop computers being sold, according to IDC.
   
3. The sheer number of smartphone users has more than doubled, and Digby expects at least 65 million more to be enabled by year’s end.
   
4. The average mobile subscriber is age 25-34 and nearly twice as likely to make more than $100,000, according to NielsenWire.
   
5. Mobile represents an additional revenue opportunity because people can buy anytime, anywhere and immediately – allowing retailers to capitalize on impulse purchases.

And number six….. data collection.

Companies can gather a treasure trove of information including product views, pages users linked to, exit points, purchases, and product feedback shared with friends during chat sessions.

The question is, how do retailers use social media and mobility data for better merchandise planning? At NRF Tech on Aug. 16, SAS’ Greg Soussloff is hosting a roundtable with some of retail’s top IT executives to answer that question. He’ll report back with ideas from that discussion, so stay tuned…

In the meantime, check out a real-world example in this article detailing how Wet Seal’s social media and mobile activities have impacted merchandise and assortment planning. The junior clothing retailer’s online fashion community allows users to build, tag, share, rate and purchase outfits through a personalized virtual boutique. This user-generated content is placed directly into the online and mobile purchasing processes. Search for a pair of skinny jeans, for example, and the top-ranked user-generated outfits containing those jeans pop up.

By analyzing the online outfits and ranking data, the company can discern trends, see customer sentiment about its products and translate that into better merchandising decisions.

We hear communications service providers (CSPs) saying how important it is for them to improve the customer experience. But do they really understand the total customer experience (not just quality of experience)? Across billing, service, sales and marketing? Do they understand how the customers’ ecosystem of devices, product bundles and complex services affect their experience or how the influence of a good friend will push them to churn? Are they aware of duplicate or conflicting campaigns and do they have the power to eliminate them and replace them with effective ones?

To gain a real understanding of the customer’s experience and strategies to improve it, CSPs need analytics. With analytics, they can gain a holistic and integrated view of the customer’s experience, understand and predict behavior, and develop effective strategies within every department and every service line to improve the experience while growing revenue and profits. Simply put, analytics drive sound decision-making and profits.

Analytics are not just about building churn models!
Analytics have been widely underutilized outside the marketing department! Only recently have we seen the interest in analytics really take off. But still, there’s a lot of misinformation and missing information about how analytics can improve enterprise performance and the customer experience.

What are analytics anyway?
Many don’t understand how analytics differs from basic reporting. While a report can show how much revenue was generated from a campaign, analytics can reveal how many unprofitable customers have been targeted for a campaign and the impact of that campaign on profitability. While a report can show a churn level, analytics can identify the root cause of churn and predict churners. A report can show network utilization and faults. Analytics can identify root causes of network degradation and the impact on service and repair costs.


Continue reading "Beyond Churn - the many missed opportunities of applied analytics in CSPs"

When building a cube, you can specify a format for a measure. For example, you might specify a format of COMMA20.0 for a measure. You can also specify a format for a dimension by using the FORMAT_STRING property. For exa

1. Develop a catalog of the services that the IT organization provides to its customers.
   
2. Build a cost model to understand the resources and activities that are required to deliver these services. This is done by allocating the costs of the resources to the activities and services that consume them.
   
3. Gather, consolidate and organize all IT performance measurement and usage data from sources across all IT infrastructure into an IT-specific data mart.
   
4. Feed usage information into the IT cost model to generate accurate and equitable charges for each business unit based on their consumption of the service catalog.
   
5. Analyze the cost model to understand which services have above-average costs, and why this is so. Develop cost-cutting strategies to decrease the cost to serve while still maintaining productivity and customer satisfaction.
   
6. Combine the information in the IT data mart with expert opinion to accurately forecast demand and cost based on both statistical and judgmental forecasts, while ensuring that budgets and plans are aligned with strategic goals.
   
7. Optimize the IT function to provide cost-effective services to the business that are tuned to improving organizational productivity and profitability in accordance with its strategic goals. Returns from investments are maximized, and the benefits gained are transparent to both IT and the business.

These tips are excerpted from the new white paper, "IT Business Performance: Running IT as a business," produced by SAS in conjunction with Analytics Group, Agility Consulting and ABM Systems. If you're interested in articles about transforming IT, you might also enjoy the latest issue of Intelligence Quarterly magazine or the paper, "Business Analytics for the CIO."

When you migrate SAS Enterprise Miner from a 32 bit operating system to a 64 bit operating system, or when you move projects to a different operating system platform (for example, Windows to UNIX, Windows to Linux), you mu

Wubbo Ockels was the first Dutch astronaut in 1984. His flight aboard space shuttle Challenger motivated him in propagating a sustainable futuristic view. He spreads this idea as professor at the Aerospace Engineering faculty of the Technical University (TU) Delft and via innovative transport and energy concepts. Well-known examples are the Nuna solar car, the energy-generating Laddermills, the Superbus and the Hydrokite, a combination of an airplane and a sailing boat.

What are good examples of sustainable entrepreneurship?
“Sustainable entrepreneurship means taking risks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. A building company and a contractor have worked very hard on the construction of energy-neutral residencies in the Frisian town of Kollum. The first energy-neutral neighborhood has been built in Heerhugowaard, consisting of 1,500 homes with solar panels, wind turbines and a planted forest that compensates for the carbon emission. My Ecolutions company is working on a self-supporting sailing boat, together with two other companies. All of these projects show that a sustainable society is within reach.”

Wubbo OckelsHow has sustainable entrepreneurship taken shape within your organization?
“The TU fulfills an important role in the development of knowledge and skills to speed up the transition of energy. The young generation is enthusiastic and intelligent enough to create a better future. For this reason, the government really needs to invest more in research, development and in innovating the energy policy.”

Where should the responsibility for sustainability lie within an organization?
“Everyone at any level can contribute. The CEO has a clear position as the leader that determines the direction. People can also invent many initiatives locally. These can include very simple solutions, like decreasing the amount of fluorescent lighting in offices.”

What are realistic targets to set within an organization?
“The Netherlands could be 100 percent ‘clean’ in 2050. Targets differ, depending on the kind of organization. The above is nearly impossible for oil companies, as their shareholders demand huge profits from oil. Banks such as Triodos and Rabobank are important contributors, as they financially support sustainable energy initiatives. We must learn to make the right investments based on their present as well as on future values. Analytical software makes this return on investment measurable and predictable, and is therefore an important key to success.”

How sustainable are you in daily life?
“I sold my house in order to build our ‘Ecolution’ sailing boat, and we now live in a house with solar panels. I can get everywhere on my bicycle in Amsterdam. I do not think that you can solve energy problems by tightening one’s belt. You can, however, by creating new forms of transport and communication, and by dealing with nature more wisely. This also involves having a good time when doing so. Guitarist Jan Akkerman, for instance, performed a gig in 2007 in Groningen using energy produced by a kite. Because of the playfulness that is involved, initiatives like this get people to dream and actually act upon these dreams.”

Register and download the full e-book, Future Bright - Reinventing Responsibility.

The Xythos-based SAS Drug Development Desktop Connection (SDDDC) is not supported in a Citrix or Windows Terminal Services environment. Incorrect results may be experienced by users if this is attempted. There are no plans for the SDDDC to support

SAS ® Revenue Optimization Suite (SAS Markdown Optimization, SAS Regular Price Optimization, SAS Promotion Optimization) and SAS ® Size Optimization Suite (SAS Size Profiling and SAS Pack Optimi

To enable SAS to read Simplified Chinese data, you must set the DBCSLANG system option to a value of Chinese and change the regional and language options for you

The new CMISS function in SAS 9.2 makes it much easier to count missing values on each observation of a SAS dataset. Prior to this, you needed to use multiple lines of code to accomplish what a single line does in 9.2 a

In SAS 9.2 the new GEODIST function will return the geodetic distance in kilometers or miles. Kilometers is the default, but by selecting the option M as documented, you can get the distance in miles. The de

The new option MODIFIER allows for more flexibility in compressing out various types of data from a character string. In the Full Code tab are a few samples using some of these modifiers. Prior

The code below shows how to determine what SAS considers punctuation by using the ANYPUNCT function and a loop. It also shows how to compress out all punctuation from a string using the new P option for the COMPRESS fun

The code included in this note generates different results in SAS 9.2 than it did in previous releases. Development was asked to change some messages to make them more accurate, and this was one of the changes that was m

There are two new options that can be used with the SCAN FUNCTION beginning in SAS 9.2. They are charlist and modifier. The details are below. charlist Charlist specifies an o

The HOLIDAY FUNCTION moved from SAS High-Performance Forecasting to BASE software and is now available to all BASE software users beginning in SAS 9.2. This will make it much easier to determine many of the c

The function is still available for use, but according to development the functionality that was part of that function has been incorporated into the SCAN function. It would be a good idea to use the SCAN fun

In case you aren't keeping up with all of the latest and greatest SAS business blogs, I've read through the last few weeks worth of posts and pulled out some favorite snippets for you here.

Gary Cokins, long-time SAS performance management blogger, writes about the inventor of the aviation industry's black box and asks, Do companies need a black box?
The purpose of a “black box” is to aid in the investigation of a catastrophe. For a business, by then it is too late. Maybe other managers can learn from understanding the causes of bankruptcies of failed companies, but a more positive way of thinking of navigational technology is for steering and control.Chuck Ellstrom, State and Local Government expert meets with long-time government employees and writes about it in the post, Transparency and performance paramount at meeting of the minds…and me. At a time when it seems no one in government can agree on anything, Chuck says,What we all came to agree upon was that no matter what the policy area, government transparency and performance were the two major issues facing state and local governments in the next few years. We concurred that tightening budgets, higher citizen demand, greater media scrutiny and large infusions of stimulus dollars are all transparency drivers. Why is text mining becoming more popular in business settings? Find out here: More and more companies are realizing that text analytics can significantly improve business decisions. The course examines the current major application areas and provides data and example analyses to illustrate how text mining can be used to solve real problems. In the post Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss, Jason Burke ponders why conference content seems stale:In session after session, I saw one presenter after another delivering content that could have been delivered without any changes whatsoever 5 or more years ago. If you like a good story, read How Certain is that Number in the Window? where Leo Sadovy is asked to answer the following questions: What is this? Why should I believe this number? What makes this number any better than all the others that have come through this room before and failed miserably? Finally, the most recent 101 post on our business analytics blog is about Risk Management 101. Here's the excerpt:In today's global economy, it is critical to see risk as an integral part of the business ecosystem. In this new ecosystem, we are seeing the emergence of a new discipline referred to as governance risk and compliance (GRC). GRC is about taking the big picture view.

Most SAS/IntrNet programs can be converted to and then run as a stored process without having to change any code. For more information about this conversion and possible issues, see http://support.sas.com/rnd/i