SAS Buys a Build Out in the MRM Market

SAS Institute has acquired Veridiem, a privately held company in Maynard, MA, which providers marketing resource management (MRM) software. The acquisition is intended to augment SAS's Customer Intelligence product line, the company's enterprise marketing management solution. The product line focuses on marketing automation, event-based marketing, campaign optimization, and Web analytics, but Veridiem's software provides feedback across a broader spectrum. "We do a lot of work with marketing and marketing automation," says Jim Davis, senior vice president and CMO of SAS Institute. "Veridiem optimizes a company's entire marketing efforts, across the board, including trade promotion and public relations." The acquisition is a good fit, because SAS has a strong partnership with Aprimo, which competes directly with Veridiem in the MRM market. Veridiem's software is designed to promote accountability within marketing organizations by delivering continuous intelligence about the impact marketing activities are having across various channels, including trade promotion and public relations efforts. "The acquisition will enhance our ability to optimize marketing activities across an entire organization, from inception to completion," says Jim Goodnight, president and CEO of SAS. The acquisition is also a good fit for SAS because Veridiem's software focuses more on analytics than some of the other companies who play in the MRM space, such as Aprimo, SAP, Unica, and Oracle, according to Kimberly Collins, a research vice president at Gartner, in her "Magic Quadrant for Marketing Resource Management, 1Q06." "Veridiem focuses on the analytics of MRM, including dashboards, point-and-click data mining, scenario planning, and marketing mix optimization," she writes. "Analytics has been one of the most immature aspects of MRM in terms of client adoption and vendor capabilities." Finally, the move could help SAS better compete with Unica in marketing automation, since SAS is Unica's number one competitor from a campaign management standpoint, according to Gareth Herschel, research director at Gartner. The differentiating factor is "Unica uses MRM as an advantage," Herschel says. Related articles: Unica Acquires MarketSoft Gartner Releases Its BI Magic Quadrant

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