SAS Focused on Finance
IntelliVisor for Financial Services, the newest CRM solution from SAS, hopes to build on the successes the company has experienced with other industry specific ASP offerings. The third in a series of products targeting individual markets, the first two being retail and pharmaceuticals, this solution is designed to offer a faster and more in depth way of using analytics.
According to Richard Roach, senior marketing director for SAS IntelliVisor, there are too many industries that do not fully understand how to successfully use Web analytics.
"There is a very simple idea that in many different industries there are far too many unwashed visitors to a Web site," Roach says. "Users who come to your site that you don't know how they got there, how long they stay or what kind of information they're accessing. Simple session recording tools don't give you the complete understanding you need to make your Web presence effective.
"The Web isn't just a source of information, it's a way of doing business," Roach says.
Roach maintains that by using IntelliVisor companies will be able to datamine their sites and examine key events that will help give a better understanding of what type of information users are accessing and what they're doing with that information. That information will permit companies to better target various user groups with well-crafted ad campaigns, Roach says.
While it has always had deep penetration into the financial services market, Kevin Scott, a senior analyst with AMR Research, hasn't seen anything new with this release from SAS. Scott maintains that although a new analytics solution might offer an enterprise new tools, the focus should be on better use of the information available.
"There's a huge amount of information to be examined around a financial services Web site," Scott says. "People are finding out more than just their account balances; they're learning about applying for loans and refinancing. Companies need to be more advanced on how they're using their analytics."