The ultimate gathering of thousands of data scientists, enthusiasts, and business practitioners, SAS’s Analytics Experience conference in Las Vegas this week served as the launch pad for several business applications on their new Cloud platform, Viya.
Viya Brings Data Scientists and Business Analysts Together - The message from SAS is clear, the collaboration between data scientists and business analysts needs to be tighter than ever and the platform needed to appeal to both sides. The expectations are also higher now for the next phase of predictive analytics so Viya has cognitive computing capabilities embedded across the various applications. Conversations with various customers and partners at the event indicated that they are excited about SAS’s new open approach with Viya, allowing for development in SAS, Java, Python, or Lua, and connections to REST APIs.
Marquee Customers Leveraging Deep Marketing Analytics Capabilities - Specific to the marketing side where my interest lies, the case studies for SAS’s Customer Intelligence 360 Marketing Automation solution were a standout of brands including Ansira with Panera Bread, 1-800-FLOWERS, and Synchrony Financial. These case studies on SAS’s Customer Intelligence Marketing Automation solution, illustrate how brands are leveraging advanced data analytics to power digital Marketing excellence.
As an example, data marketing agency and SAS customer, Ansira, works with Panera Bread to leverage advanced segmentation and analytics to run the popular MyPanera loyalty program. With the goal being 1-to-1 personalized marketing, Panera leverages customer analytics on flavor preferences, days to next purchase, etc. to optimize offers to “delight” customers. The analytics are what led to the developments such as Panera’s Rapid Pickup program to improve customer experience by reducing wait times. In comparison, 1-800-FLOWERS takes a multi-brand, multi-campaign approach to cross-promote their diverse brands from Harry and David to Cheryl’s cookies, but standardize on a single reward program.
Customer Intelligence 360 Developments Increases SAS’s Competitiveness - SAS’s Marketing Automation has been under the radar in comparison to other marketing automation solutions as the company has taken an analytics-first approach versus campaign execution. The marketing campaign design features and user experience are not as simple for marketers to use in comparison to the other marketing automation solutions with roots in campaign design. Previously, pricing was a barrier to entry for many marketers, but Customer Intelligence 360 lowers the cost of ownership and opens new opportunities for SAS to compete with the other Marketing Automation providers. Conversations with SAS’s product management team shows an increased focus in highlighting the campaign execution capabilities for digital marketers in upcoming releases and messaging. In particular the capabilities around real-time personalization across channels to create customer journeys and track performance. SAS customers that I spoke with casually throughout the event cited great ROI results due to the insight from SAS’s robust analytics capabilities and overall satisfaction with the solution is high.
The Modern Marketer Needs to Increase Analytical Skills - Although the conference’s primary audience is not marketers, the amount of attendees and presenters from the business side of organizations was high. Many presenters in the marketing automation sessions referenced, “Our data scientists are right there working side by side with our marketing and creative teams.” The silos are coming down and the modern marketer has to balance the art and science of marketing and recognize the importance of leveraging data analytics to improve or rethink campaigns. The next wave of predictive intelligence through cognitive capabilities and machine learning for Marketing is here now and marketers need to increase their understanding of the “science” aspect to be competitive.
See my Storify collection of tweets from SAS Analytics Experience 2016 below:
