cio-insights-special-report
TRANSCRIPT
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cioinsights
High-performance computing Operational insights Sustainable growth Business and IT alignment Doing more with less
Imperatives for the new CIOHow to manage data and apply analyticsfor efficiency and change
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Editor-in-Chie
Kelly LeVoyer
Managing Editor
Alison Bolen
Copy Editors
Amy Dyson
Trey Whittenton
Chris Hoerter
Editorial Contributors
Anne-Lindsay Beall
Lori Bieda
Rockwell C. Bonecutter
Keith Collins
Tony Fisher
Russell Gardner
Barry Gay
Suzanne Gordon
Dale R. Hersch
Anne Milley
Kate Morton
Stephen Nunn
Cathy Traugot
Patrick Van Deven
Ed Walker
Aiman Zeid
Design
Ashley Campbell
Circulation
Ellen Brandt
Production
Melody Fountain
Copyright 2010 SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved. Limited copies may be made or internal sta use only. Credit must begiven to the publisher. Otherwise, no part o this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission o the publisher and copyrightowner. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks o SAS Institute Inc. in the USA andother countries. indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks o their respective companies. S62016.1010
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsContents|P1
2 CIO imperativesOptimization and innovation
3 Executive summary
4 Managing the data assetHow to treat your data like the high-value business asset that it is
8 Three CIO challenges you can solve todayOvercome your biggest issues with a framework for business analytics
11 Why IT cant ignore social mediaSocial data is not an island but part of a larger consumer ecosystem
12 More government intelligence or lessBelgian public sector CIO taps into analytical creativity andmaximizes resources
16 Make the most o your analytical talentTips for establishing an analytic center of excellence
20 Good news or retail CIOsBusiness analytics technologies are more than just a trend
24 How to transition IT rom cost center to value centerData integration and language translation bring efficiencies
26 Running IT as a businessSeven steps to aligning IT with the business
29 The CIO as eco-championFive ways IT can contribute to a companys green agenda
32 Four methods or high-perormance computing
How to choose the right high-performance computing methodfor your business analytics scenario
36 Top 5 reasons why CIOs want business analyticsSAS executive explains how to bring efficiency to IT
contents
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP2|CIO imperatives: Optimization and innovation
CIO imperatives:Optimization and innovationBy Suzanne Gordon, CIO, SAS
In a struggling economy and even in
an unsettled period o recovery the
words optimization and innovation orm
the basis o nearly every executives
rallying cry around the world. The in-
tent, or rather the goal, is to inspire
employees to streamline operations,
reduce costs and increase productiv-
ity, while laying down a solid ounda-
tion or growth in advance o better
economic times.
As the CIO o SAS, I witness every day
how these themes orm the nucleus o
our IT departments strategic plan and
guide my management teams actions.
I view the role o CIO as being similar
to that o a ships head engineer, who
manages the technical operations o a
large vessel. Its a critical organizational
role; even more so in stormy waters.
With this in mind, the alignment, e-ciency and ocus o my team plays an
essential role in maintaining SAS market
leadership, by applying high standards
o service to meet internal and external
customer expectations. I expect many o
you are in the same boat.
Today, as CIOs, we must approach
optimization and innovation rom
three standpoints: people, process and
technology. In terms o people and pro-
cess, we need to ocus on things such as
eciency, agility, change management
and productivity, and every employee
should be empowered to nd ways o
improving and innovating each day.
Where technology is concerned, cost-
eectiveness, integration, consolidation,
globalization, operational insight and
virtualization will be critical to achieving
more with less and, ultimately, improving
organizational perormance.
The issues we ace today as CIOs are
truly global in nature. Collaboration
and sharing o best practices amongst
senior IT executives will provide
a ertile ground or achieving our
mutual goals o optimization andinnovation and its in this spirit that
the current CIO Insights report has
been compiled. In these pages we
address some key challenges and
opportunities or CIOs today. The
articles and case studies, gathered
rom around the world, are meant to
inorm, inspire and to motivate you as
IT leaders, in your ongoing eorts to
optimize and innovate in waters both
calm and rough.
Chie Inormation Ocer Suzanne Gordon oversees
the IT inrastructure and support services at SAS
A pastComputerWorldPremier 100 IT leader, Gordo
has held a number o IT and consulting leadership
positions in her 30-year tenure at SAS.
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www.sas.com/cioinsights
Executive summary
Executive summary|P3
As a modern-day Renaissance leader, todays CIO inuences a more varied agenda than ever rom an organiza-
tions IT strategy to its proftability and customer service to its impact on the environment. This CIO Insights report shares
strategies or managing data, resources and innovative technologies to enable growth, proftability and agility. Explore
high-perormance computing or greater analytic perormance; learn how a business analytics architecture can help
deliver on business unit demands; read best practices or building an analytics center o excellence all while running as
a proftable and environmentally conscious IT organization. To share this report online, visitwww.sas.com/cioinsights.
Un peu limage dun leader de la Renaissance des temps modernes, le directeur dessystmes dinormation (DSI) daujourdhui voit ses responsabilits plus nombreuses etplus varies que jamais ; de la mise en uvre de la stratgie de systmes dinormationdune organisation leur rentabilit, en passant par la gestion de son service clientou encore son impact environnemental. Le prsent rapport CIO Insights (Le point surle DSI) vous propose des stratgies de gestion de donnes, ressources et nouvellestechnologies qui vous ouvriront les portes de la croissance, de la rentabilit et deladaptabilit. Dcouvrez ce que des perormances inormatiques suprieurespeuvent vous apporter en termes de perormance analytique ; apprenez tirer parti dunearchitecture danalytique de gestion pour rpondre aux besoins des divisionsoprationnelles ; consultez les meilleures pratiques pour mettre en place un vritablecentre dexcellence en matire danalytique... le tout, en poursuivant vos activitsdorganisation de technologies de linormation la ois rentable et cosensible. Pourpartager ce rapport en ligne, consultez le site www.sas.com/cioinsights.
Como lder renacentista moderno,el director general de inormacin(chie inormation ocer, CIO) de hoyinfuye en una agenda ms variadaque nunca, desde la estrategiade tecnologa de la inormacinde una organizacin hasta surentabilidad, servicio de atencinal cliente e impacto en el medioambiente. El inorme de opinionesdel CIO comparte estrategiaspara administrar datos, recursosy tecnologas innovadoras parapermitir el crecimiento, la rentabilidady agilidad. Explore una inormticade alto rendimiento para lograrun mayor rendimiento analtico;aprenda sobre cmo la arquitecturaanaltica de un negocio puede ayudara cumplir con las exigencias de lasunidades comerciales; interpretelas metodologas acertadas paraconstruir un centro analtico deexcelencia. Logre todo esto mientrasadministra una organizacin detecnologa de la inormacin rentabley con conciencia ecolgica. Paracompartir este inorme por Internet,
visite www.sas.com/cioinsights.
RsumResumen ejecutivo
Die Augaben des heutigen CIO umassen ein breiteres Spektrum als je zuvor von der IT Strategie eines Unternehmenszu seiner Protabilitt und dem Kundenservice bis hin zu seinen Auswirkungen au die Umwelt. Dieser CIO Insights-Bericht zeigt Strategien r die Verwaltung von Daten, Ressourcen und innovativen Technologien au, die Wachstum,Protabilitt und Flexibilitt untersttzen. Entdecken Sie High Perormance Computing r hhere analytische Leistung;lernen Sie, wie eine Business-Analytics-Architektur den Anorderungen von Geschtseinheiten gerecht werden kann;lesen Sie ber beste Vorgehensweisen zum Aubau eines Analytik-Kompetenzzentrums... und all das, whrend Sie alsprotable und umweltbewusste IT-Organisation ihre Geschte hren. Um diesen Bericht online zu lesen, besuchen Siewww.sas.com/cioinsights.
Zusammenassung
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP4|Managing the data asset
Managing the data assetHow to treat your data like the high-value business asset that it is
By Tony Fisher, President and CEO o DataFlux
Data is now collected and saved rom
every conceivable source Internet
applications, ront-oce and back-oce
systems, trading networks, social media
and such complexity requires a sophis-
ticated, deliberate process or managing
this vital inormation. Ater all, data holds
the key to sales, marketing, customer
support, production and other initiatives.Without an accurate view o customers,
products, materials, locations and
assets, how can a company compete in
todays marketplace?
Organizations must approach data
management in the same ashion that
they manage any process with a
well-dened, repeatable methodology.
To accomplish this, you need a data
management liecycle methodology
to manage, monitor and maintain
data to benet every phase o the
business. DataFlux recommends this
six-phase process:
1. Dene. 4. Execute.
2. Discover. 5. Evaluate.
3. Design. 6. Control.
Lets look at each step in detail.
Defne
The Dene phase o the data manage-
ment methodology is just as important
as mapping out a journey. The deci-
sions made at this phase will guide the
collection, organization, enhancement
monitoring and retirement o your data
assets throughout the process. While
you dont need all the answers at the be-ginning, you need a solid plan on how to
proceed and what the ultimate success
indicators will be. Also, these success
indicators have to map to the business
problem identied earlier; the reason
or the project (cut costs, mitigate risks
enhance revenue, etc.) provides a crucia
guide or the Dene phase.
During the Dene phase, an organi-
zation should rst answer a series o
questions about:
People. Whos involved? And or what
purpose? This step outlines everyone
involved in the data management
process, including executive sup-
port, manager/director sponsorship
and business and IT involvement
Organizations also set up steering
committees and/or stewardship
teams to acilitate collaboration on
cross-unctional issues.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsManaging the data asset|P5
Road map
. Where are we now?Where do we want to go? What ob-
stacles are in our way? Oten, the rst
task ater selecting the right people is
to determine a path to a successul
outcome including the denition o
a successul outcome.
Source systems. What data will we
need? Where is that data coming
rom? The road map tells the story o
where the project is intended to go.
This part o the Dene phase will in-
orm the team on the source systems
and which data will play a role in the
data management project.
Business processes. Which busi-
ness processes will be aected?
How will better data enhance the
way the organization operates? This
part o the Dene process maps the
data management strategy to exist-
ing business processes. Better data
can ultimately streamline business
processes, as less time is spent rec-onciling conusing views or managing
poor-quality data.
Business rules and data defnitions.
How do we dene customer? How
do we want to optimize procurement
and spending? This phase seems
simple enough, but it can be decep-
tively dicult. Billing might dene
customer as anyone that receives
an invoice, while customer support
may only want to know who the useris. These decisions will orm the basis
o business rules and data denitions
that will guide later phases.
Discover
Data can only be useul i you understand
where it is, what it means to your organi-
zation and how it relates to other data in
your organization. The Discover phase is
designed to do just that.
Every new application implementation,
data warehouse development, data mi-
gration or consolidation initiative should
start with data discovery. Additionally,
any time that new data sources enter
your organization, start with data discov-
ery. Data discovery has several compo-
nents to it, and each prepares you or
your data initiatives:
Data exploration. This diagnostic
phase is concerned with document-
ing the data in your organization and
the characteristics o that data. Datadiscovery arms you with inormation
about the accuracy, consistency and
reliability o your data.
Data profling and auditing. Data
proling alerts you to data that does
not match the characteristics dened
in the metadata compiled during data
exploration. But, more importantly,
data proling can also tell you i the
data meets the business rules and
denitions established in the Denephase. In addition, data proling can
help you determine the relationships
across your data sources where you
have similar data, where data is in
confict, where data is duplicated and
where data may be dormant.
Data cataloging and business
vocabulary. You need a development
environment where data sources
can be combined and rationalized
A place where you can group data
sources into projects to allow you to
work across your data sources and
develop a consistent environment o
managing your data. Data catalog-
ing lays the groundwork or all data
management tasks to ollow. Data
catalogs must be augmented with
business denitions and vocabular-
ies, allowing the business user to
comortably navigate the landscape.
Design
Ater completing the rst two steps o
the data management methodology, you
will be able map your strategy, identiy
sources, understand the underlying or-
mats and structures, as well as assess
the relationships and uses o data. Now
you ace another challenge taking all o
these dierent structures, ormats, data
sources and data eeds, and creating
an environment that accommodates the
needs o your business.
Data can only be useul i youunderstand where it is, what
it means to your organization
and how it relates to otherdata in your organization.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP6|Managing the data asset
The Design phase requires consolidation
and coordination, all the while concen-
trating on three major imperatives:
1. Consistency o rules. Ultimately, anorganization needs one set o busi-
ness rules that can be stored centrally
but deployed across all data sources,
applications and lines o business.
2. Consistency o the data model. The
data model is the single, denitive
source or how your data maps to
your business. Through the process
o creating a well-structured data
model, you identiy the appropriate
source systems and begin to reconcilemultiple views, i required.
3. Consistency o business pro-
cesses. During the Dene and
Discover phases, you will identiy pro-
cesses that are potentially aected.
Now, the task is to provide consis-
tency across these processes. When
creating business rules, you have to
know how to reconcile questions like
Is this a new customer or an existing
customer? or Is this a customer ingood standing? By understanding
the processes that are aected, you
can design more eective rules to
automate business processes.
Execute
Now that the business users have es-
tablished how the data and rules should
be dened, it is up to the IT sta to en-
sure that databases and applicationsadhere to the denitions. There are
many types o architectures involved
in this phase: enabling ERP and CRM
applications via proprietary interaces,
enabling data marts and data ware-
houses via extraction, transormation
and loading (ETL) fows, enabling MDM
systems via service-oriented architec-
ture (SOA)/ETL or other technologies.
The method and management o en-
abling the data in any o these environ-ments is a decision that IT has to make in
order to ensure the integrity and integra-
tion into the various systems.
One potential pitall in the Execute phase
is to duplicate the rules and standards
rom the Design phase or each applica-
tion or data source. When duplicating the
rules and denitions across siloed, unre-
lated systems, multiple, point-to-point
interaces are inadvertently created.
These rules denitions must then beupdated, separately, each time a rule or
business initiative changes.
Naturally, this approach is highly imprac
tical or the IT team to manage. A better
solution is to build the denitions once
and ensure that you have the ability to
collectively apply those denitions across
your organization. As one IT director put
it: We want to build our standards and
rules once and then have the ability to
use them repeatedly and propagate to
the entire organization seamlessly.
For each data source, each business
process and each application that is
modied to the new data denitions
you need to:
Understandtherequirements. Validate that the new integration
meets the requirements.
Deploytheinterfaceintoproduction.
By repeating this process during
the execution phase, you can create
the data management rules to guide
the collection and organization o data
test its integrity, and move to the next
phase o the process.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsManaging the data asset|P7
Tony Fisher is President and CEO o DataFlux, a
wholly owned subsidiary o SAS, which enables
companies to analyze, improve and control their
data through an integrated technology platorm. He
has guided DataFlux through tremendous growth as
it became a market-leading provider o data quality
and data integration solutions.
Evaluate
A healthy data lie cycle requires a robust
monitoring and reporting system. The
data needs to be consistently monitored
so it remains t-or-purpose or your
organization. Why is this so critically
important? Ater all, you just spent lots o
time, energy and resources to get your
systems to a point where the business
users have a consistent and validated
view o your organization. Isnt it time to
just enjoy the success o all this eort?
Actually, the opposite is true. Very ew
organizations are static they are orever
growing and evolving. For example, you
add new partners that bring new data tothe table. Your business changes, sales
regions are created or modied, you take
on new initiatives and you develop new
products. All o these changes must be
refected in your data, which makes the
Evaluate phase so important.
Your mantra or success at this point
needs to be: 1. Monitor; 2. Review; and
3. Optimize. Data should be monitored
and validated as it enters your organi-
zation to veriy it is meeting your rules.Those rules need to be constantly moni-
tored to ensure they are still meeting the
needs o your business. Eorts in dis-
covery, design and execution will allow
you to consolidate the rules and require-
ments into a single environment. With
the ability to centralize the required data
management rules, the changes can be
immediately propagated across the or-
ganization, without duplication o eort.
Monitoring is a joint activity between
IT and business users. IT monitors and
validates that systems are running within
their required service-level needs. Busi-
ness users also benet rom the moni-toring reports constantly reviewing the
reports and validating that business
needs are being met while making chang-
es when the business needs change.
Control
One thing is certain in todays inormation
age: A wide variety o data will continue
to quickly pour into your organization.
It is easy to see why data is a key asset.
However, it is also important to recog-
nize when data needs to be retired. TheControl phase is about reassessing data.
I data is no longer useul to your organi-
zation, you must be able to retire the data
appropriately. This allows you to ree
up resources that are being expended
maintaining the data environment.
For example, lets look at a common data
problem acing nancial services rms.
When mergers, acquisitions and divesti-
tures occur, you need the ability to purge
or re-categorize data. You dont want to
spend resources managing the data o a
company that no longer exists.
Lastly, it is important to promote yousuccesses across your organization
When you began your lie cycle, you
were solving a business problem. By the
time you have reached this phase in the
lie cycle, you should have improved you
business. Communicate and evangelize
these messages to help everyone rom
senior management on down recognize
that the eorts were successul and the
business is improved. This demonstrates
the business benets o a sound data
management methodology across theorganization, and it paves the way o
support o uture initiatives.
Very ew organizations are static. You addnew partners that bring new data to the table.
Your business changes. Sales regions arecreated or modied. You take on new initiativesand develop new products. All o these changesmust be refected in your data.
ONLINE
One solution for data quality, data integration
and MDM:
www.sas.com/cio-datafux
Data integration 101 webinar:
www.sas.com/cio-dicast
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www.sas.com/cioinsights
Three CIO challengesyou can solve todayOvercome your biggest issues with a ramework or business analytics
CIOs and IT managers are under tre-
mendous pressure to choose the right
products, services and technologies that
can transorm data into a competitive
advantage enabling strategic deci-
sions that optimize perormance. Theywant to enhance operations and achieve
success by increasing data consistency,
streamlining administration and provid-
ing easy-to-use reporting tools backed
by powerul analytics. To empower the
organization now and meet uture needs
in a timely ashion, CIOs and IT manag-
ers should address these three issues.
Issue 1: Support sustainable
growth while managing risk throughthe innovative use o technology
and inormation
Change in business is inevitable
especially with the collapse and bail-
out o global banking systems and the
sudden instability o stock markets.
These circumstances and more have
created a radically dierent context or
economic growth. While the dust set-
tles, governance, risk and compliance
will play major roles in transorming
organizations to reduce the possibility
o urther collapses. Technology and
process strategies will ocus on rebuild-
ing sustainable growth levels but withinthe constructs o increased regulations
perormance and risk management
coordination, and evolving expecta-
tions o corporate responsibility.
Organizations are continually searching
or innovative ways to improve peror-
mance, achieve greater top-line growth
and maintain a competitive edge
To do so requires decision makers be-
ing able to assess the impact o market
dynamics more quickly, explore dier-
ent options, learn rom experimentation
and validate best approaches. SAS
can help IT organizations by providing
a fexible environment that allows the
organization to change or evolve as the
need arises, while enabling centralized
control and management o data and
inormation processes.
P8|Three CIO challenges you can solve today
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsThree CIO challenges you can solve today|P9
Issue 2: Provide an inrastructureto manage the growing appetite
or intelligence
More data, more users. These are the
two primary demands acing most ITorganizations. And unortunately, many
CIOs admit they have the sense that
managing the fow o inormation into
and throughout the business is not be-
ing done eectively. By integrating your
organizations technology components
(whether its an ERP system, call center
data, point-o-sale systems, etc.) within
your IT inrastructure, SAS can help
you create a single environment that
overcomes departmental inormation
silos and diverse computing platormsto deliver integrated intelligence that can
make a dierence to your organization.
SAS provides an integrated suite o sot-
ware that leverages domain expertise,
best practices and state-o-the-art busi-
ness analytics that enable your organiza-
tion not only to understand the past and
monitor the present, but optimize oppor-
tunities or the uture.
Issue 3:Derive more valuerom existing technology and
inormation assets
Make the most o what you have, and
do more with less. Particularly in thistime o economic strie, this is a mantra
everyone hears. IT departments are no
dierent. Organizations expect IT to de-
liver more value while staying at or under
budget. At the same time, IT must miti-
gate the risks associated with managing
inormation and security o the systems.
This can be a dicult challenge when
every department and business unit is
collecting, managing and analyzing data
in silos with a heavy dependence on
spreadsheets or analysis.
Decision makers demand ast answers,
and it is the job o IT to make sure inor-
mation is accessible at the right level o
detail when it is needed. To make the
most o what you have, you must ag-
gregate and cleanse your data, and
ensure security processes are in place.
You need a data integration environment
that is easily managed. You need the
Decision makers demandast answers, and it is the jobo IT to make sure inormationis accessible at the right levelo detail when it is needed.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP10|Three CIO challenges you can solve today
Business analytics drives savings and revenues or1-800-FLOWERS.COM
Steve Bozzo, the CIO at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, uses SAS to provide a
360-degree view o more than 30 million customers and help 15 business
units derive the inormation they need to grow revenues and reduce costs.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM has grown its amily o git brands to more
than 14 through a combination o internal development and strategic
acquisitions in the past nine years. This presents Chie Inorma-
tion Ocer Steve Bozzo with a monumental task: aggregate
inormation across multiple platorms to provide a 360-degree view o more
than 30 million customers, help 15 separate business units derive
the inormation they need to grow revenues and reduce operatingcosts and do it all on a tight budget. SAS solutions cut the task
down to size, helping the CIO o the largest forist and git shop
in the world meet his objectives.
There has never been a SAS solution weve added
that hasnt resulted in double-digit ROI, says Bozzo.
I would tell other CIOs that are thinking about
buying SAS: Youre going to be pleasantly
surprised. And that doesnt happen
oten or CIOs.
ONLINE
White paper: Business Analytics for the CIO:
www.sas.com/cio-paper
White paper: Architecture for Business Analytics:
www.sas.com/cio-bapaper
Reporting. Role-based interaces en-
able dierent types o users to surace
and visualize meaningul intelligence
rom consistent, companywide data.
Using the platorm or SAS Business
Analytics as a oundation, SAS oers
targeted business solutions that supportkey areas o your business, such as cus-
tomers, nance, risk and supply chain
plus turnkey solutions or various vertical
markets, including nancial services, lie
sciences, health care, insurance, retail,
ability to apply analytics to gain predic-
tive insights and push appropriate inor-
mation to decision makers so they can
make the most o it, whether they want
to drill down and ask urther questions or
have presentation-quality results at their
ngertips. By improving data quality and
security processes, integrating inorma-tion with business processes and provid-
ing data that is easily understood at the
right level o detail, SAS helps IT execu-
tives cost-eectively achieve a strategic
ramework or business analytics.
Data integration, analytics
and reporting
The platorm or SAS Business Analytics
provides the oundation needed to solve
your top issues. It integrates individualtechnology components within your
existing IT inrastructure into a single,
unied system. The result is an inor-
mation fow that crosses organizational
boundaries and delivers new insights
that drive value. SAS Business Analyt-
ics extends the value o your existing
systems, while setting the stage or new
levels o intelligence. It includes the ol-
lowing components:
Data integration. SAS oers prebuilt,
high-perormance capabilities ordata connectivity, data quality, ETL
(extract, transorm and load), data
migration, data synchronization and
data ederation.
Analytics. SAS provides an inte-
grated environment or predictive and
descriptive modeling, orecasting,
optimization, simulation, experimen-
tal design and more.
manuacturing and more. These solu-
tions incorporate our domain expertise
as well as data structures and analytic
models tuned to specic business and
industry needs.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsWhy IT cant ignore social media|P11
Why IT cant ignore social mediaSocial data is not an island but part o a larger consumer ecosystem
By Lori C. Bieda, Marketing Executive, SAS Canada
The mention o new data sources cap-
tures the ear o IT executives. And it
should, as IT inherits the implications o
new data rom nding a home in the
corporate IT structure or the data, toputting in place the appropriate policies
to manage it.
Consider social data, surpassing
1.2 zettabytes in size and sourced
rom millions o online sites, blogs
and tweets with applications ranging
rom marketing and public relations to
customer service, market research and
human resources. With 90 percent o
executives saying social media will have
a potential impact on their corporatebrand, organizations are siting through
the opportunities or this new medium,
according to a recent study rom SAS
Canada and Leger Marketing. Why then
are less than 7 percent o IT proession-
als engaged?
New to the medium and daunted by
the sheer volume o data, most organi-
zations have outsourced the collection
and management o social inormation
to analytics and sotware rms. Lead-
ers whove either been appointed
heads o social media (typically digital
marketers and PR proessionals), or
those whove stepped orward vol-
untarily to claim that unclaimed land,
are working with vendors to pull social
ragments and sentiment into busi-
ness taxonomies, and striving to make
sense o the chatter.
Yet, data begets data. The more o it that
gets analyzed, the more opportunity the
marketer will see and the greater the ten-
dency to combine data sources to create
a uller picture o the business. Call cen-ter records, corporate e-mail, customer
satisaction data all rich data sources
are likely siblings to social data.
For example, when the inamous
YouTube video showing a Bic pen
opening a Kryptonite Lock reached
critical mass online, I bet a food o con-
cerns came pouring in to Kryptonite call
centers and sites. Consumers know no
corporate boundaries. Like water run-
ning through all available cracks, theypenetrate the organization on multiple
ronts, their pathways oten only evident
in post-analysis. A uller picture in real
time allows us to properly sta call cen-
ters or escalating issues, adjust Web and
call scripts to eld inquiries, and respond
to growing issues beore they swell to un-
manageable proportions and risk brand
damage or customer satisaction.
Beore companies launch their socia
media strategies and IT inherits the
implications, its best i IT leaders inser
themselves into the discussion. Socia
data, while indeed a new data source, isno island. Used strategically, it is an es-
sential part o a consumer ecosystem
Ater the preliminary listening is done
marketers will graduate to more sophis-
ticated needs and demand connectiv-
ity to rich internal data sources. Theyl
expect there to be bridges traversing
the islands, and IT will be essential o
tapping into internal sources and ensur-
ing accurate, timely inormation fow to
marketers desktops.
Itd be a shame, or a medium whose
very power is dened by speed, to not
build the underlying inrastructure in
a way that enables superior precision
and a speed to market that makes
competitors wince.
Lori Bieda is a marketing executive with 19 years o
experience helping companies leverage analytics and
client insights to drive protable business decisions.
Formerly Vice President o Client Insights and Database
Marketing at a major bank, Bieda is now a SAS con-
sultant helping organizations across Canada, US, Latin
America and the Caribbean improve their analytics and
marketing eectiveness.
ONLINE
SAS Social Media Analytics demo:
www.sas.com/cio-smademo
Survey says 90 percent of Canadian
organizations use social media:
www.sas.com/cio-smasurvey
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www.sas.com/cioinsights
More government intelligence or lessBelgian public sector CIO taps into analytical creativity and maximizes resources
Frank De Saer, CIO at Belgiums Federal
Public Service Economy, which includes
the very important National Institute o
Statistics (NIS), recognizes that an e-
ective inormation delivery strategy is
driven by business needs. His challenge,
as he sees it, is to increase the quality
o government inormation and services
while driving down its cost.
Achieving this objective means ocus-
ing on three distinct requirements: datastandardization, more ocused use o IT
human resources; and, most importantly,
putting inormation and analytics in the
hands o the users.
The need or standardization exists or
a number o reasons that have evolved
over the years: the need to access data
rom various sources, the end users
need or ocused expert support with-
out buck-passing, the economic ben-
ets such as reduced maintenance eesand the desire to ensure that analytical
reporting is based on one version o
the truth.
Nowhere is it more important to ensure
that analytics is based on a consistent
and accurate pool o inormation than
in the area o economic statistics, which
serves as a basis or planning at macro-
P12|More government intelligence or less
The integrated SASsolution was technicallysuperior and promised
to be more stable,guaranteeing integrated
security and metadatain both the short and
the long run.
Frank De Saer,CIO, Belgiums Federal
Public Service Economy
and microeconomic levels. Our core
business is delivering high-quality, reliable
inormation to our customers: govern-
ment ministers, civil servants, enterprises
and private citizens, says De Saer.
Public Service Economy is composed o
167 business units and services cover-
ing areas as diverse as the Belgian En-
terprise Register, the calculation o ue
prices and intellectual property. These
units require 24/7 access to businessintelligence. Thats what De Saers team
provides, but he goes even urther: He
sees the contemporary CIOs challenge
as increasing the quality o governmen
inormation and services while driving
down its cost.
Fewer employees, alling budgets
I you could travel back in time 15 years
and see how things worked at the NIS
then, you would appreciate the pace
o change. Back then, all data had tobe manually input into the fat les on
the mainrame, and statistics were then
laboriously compiled and published in
hard copy. On the other hand, the NIS
had enough human resources to cope
with the task. Since then, headcount has
been reduced steadily. For every three
employees who retire, De Saer can re-
cruit only one.
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Budgets have likewise come under pres-
sure. We ace a situation that is amiliar
to many CIOs in both the public and
private sectors, says De Saer. Most
o our annual budget is spent on xed
operational costs (OPEX). That means
unds or new projects are diminishing
every year i we do not succeed in reduc-
ing our OPEX.
Empowering employees
and customersAt the same time, the demands o end
users at the NIS have changed dramati-
cally. To keep up with expectations,
we need to stay ahead o the curve,
says De Saer.
Printed stats are no longer acceptable.
Users want inormation that is delivered
t or purpose and ready to use.
I eel we are at the oreront o a revolu-
tion in the way IT unctions in the publicsector, says De Saer. Essentially, the
new way o working is to help employees
and customers to help themselves.
Each government department, institu-
tion, company and individual now wants
to use inormation in their own particular
way. They want to apply their own lters,
and they want to be able to download
digital les with data that can be eas-
ily extracted and loaded into their own
systems. They want the data in a wide
variety o ormats such as Excel, XML,
XBLR, HTML and Open Oce. But they
also want the inormation to be stamped
with the ocial seal o ederal govern-
ment approval.
For example, the NIS publishes inorma-
tion about business start-ups and bank-
ruptcies in Belgium. An end user can goin and drill down and lter on the data,
or example, to nd out detailed inorma-
tion about start-ups and bankruptcies
by locality in a particular sector such
as hotels, restaurants and catering. He
can then order the delivery o the same
report on a monthly basis, in the ormat
o his choice.
We are delivering inormation that en-
ables the ederal and regional govern-
ments to understand, regulate and boostthe countrys economic perormance,
says De Saer.
For the most part, the inormation is
provided reely on a sel-serve basis.
External customers include large direct
marketing companies, but more typi-
cally they are people working in regional
I eel we are at the
oreront o a revolutionin the way IT unctionsin the public sector.
Frank De Saer, CIO, BelgiumsFederal Public Service Economy
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP14|More government intelligence or less
branches o government who need inor-
mation to support policy decision mak-
ing, and managers in companies who
need to make investment decisions or
support business strategy. The problem
is that the inormation resides on various
IT systems, and packaging it in meaning-ul ways is not always straightorward.
Its many times easier and quicker than
in the days when we relied on manual
eort, but the more users see the pos-
sibilities, the more sophisticated their
demands, De Saer says.
Rationalize and standardize
De Saer believes that to deliver maxi-
mum value, an Inormation and Commu-
nications Technology department must
ocus on its core business o deliveringinormation. It must also rationalize and
standardize. He has reorganized the ICT
department at the Federal Public Service
Economy around three competence
centers, each using standard sotware:
Java or business-critical development,
Microsot SharePoint or oce and
document management, and SAS or
business intelligence. We oered our
users an inormed choice on business
intelligence. Once they had made their
choice, we standardized. SAS is the only
BI sotware we used.
The NIS now has a growing body o
power users who not only extract data
but combine data rom dierent sources,
slice and dice it according to their lo-
cal needs and oten enrich it with their
own in-house data. We also decided
to standardize on just one tool or these
SAS more stableand secure
According to De Saer, the NIS attached
great importance to controlling and mini-
mizing operational and technical riskswhen choosing and deploying a platorm.
SAS was the only supplier to oer a com-
pletely end-to-end integrated system, he
emphasizes, including OLAP unctional-
ity, comprehensive reporting capabilities,
ETL, data integration and Web solutions.
Other suppliers oered a collection o
tools rom dierent vendors, requiring ad-
ditional interacing eorts. The integrated
SAS solution was technically superior and
promised to be more stable, guaranteeing
integrated security and metadata in boththe short and the long run.
power users, says De Saer. That way
we could ensure quality o support rom
our BI Competence Centre. The tool they
selected was SAS Enterprise Guide, a
graphical interace that exploits the pow
er o SAS and enables users to publish
dynamic results in a Microsot Windowsclient application.
Originally we oered less sophisticated
options. But SAS Enterprise Guide has
really unlocked the creativity o ou
internal customers and is now the pre-
erred choice or business analysts and
statisticians alike.
From civil servant to public
services counsel
De Saer believes business intelligenceand analytics are critically important
to any organization that is trying to do
more or less. With online business
intelligence, you can outsource a lot o
IT unctions in much the same way that
banks outsourced transaction process-
ing by outsourcing it to their customers
So long as they have the right analytic
sotware, our employees and customers
can do more useul and creative things
with inormation than my colleagues in
ICT, or the simple reason that they know
their own requirements best.
Unleashing their creativity has helped
transorm the employees at Public
Service Economy rom the traditiona
image o civil servants into proessiona
advisors on all aspects o public services
and government.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsMore government intelligence or less|P15
ONLINE
Global government transformations:
www.sas.com/cio-transorm
More SAS customers in the public sector:
www.sas.com/ps-cust
Statistics ofces around the world
More than 75 dierent countries use SAS in their
statistics oces or programs that range rom census
analysis and government reporting to nancial plan-
ning and resource planning. Continue reading to learnabout some o them.
The Australian Bureau o Statistics uses SAS to
ensure the integrity o data and statistical outputs
across many divisions. John Preston, an Assistant
Director in the Methodology Division says, Many
o our collections have thousands o units a unit
being an individual or business and with such a
high number o records, SAS makes our tasks more
ecient, especially as many o the procedures we require are already pre-programmed into SAS.
Read more:www.sas.com/cio-abs.
Statistisches Bundesamt, the German Federal Statistics Oce replaced older, non-portable mainrame programs with SAS products, including customized applications.
The SAS solutions covered both our basic types o work short-term ad hoc analyses as well
as periodic evaluation processes better than all other products available on the market.
Read more:www.sas.com/cio-statisticsche.
Statistics Denmark uses SAS to collect and analyze census data without knocking on
doors or asking any questions. Instead o a traditional household-based census, Denmarks
tallies are completely register-based. We run SAS on all o our systems and it plays a vital
role in our processes, says Lars Thygesen, Director or User Services at Statistics Denmark.
Read more:www.sas.com/cio-statisticsde.
The US Census Bureau uses SAS to create person-level and household-level les or each US
state and to merge records so analysts can look at components o a household. Next, analysts
merge that data with geographical inormation so they can analyze by geographical hierarchy.
Read more: www.sas.com/cio-uscensus.
De Saer believes there is still some
distance to travel on this mission. The
new philosophy is that government intel-
ligence belongs to the public. Our uture
challenge is to do even more to unlock
that asset through open services that
acilitate collaboration between govern-ment, citizen and enterprises.
Our philosophy is also to oer ull
transparency and multichannel ac-
cess, putting the customer in control.
This approach accelerates innovation
while reducing the burden on IT a win
or everyone!
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP16|Make the most o your analytical talent
Make the most o youranalytical talentTips or establishing an analytic center o excellence
By Anne Milley, Senior Director o Analytic Strategy, SAS with Aiman Zeid, Senior Business Consultant at SA
What is an analytic center
o excellence?
An analytic center o excellence is
an internal organization that specically
ocuses on promoting the use o analytics
within an organization to achieve business
objectives. It is a central point or:
Developingandevolvingtheanalytic
inrastructure.
Promotingcollaborationandanalytic
best practices.
Drivinggrowth,costreductions
and protability.
The center is ultimately a means to sup-
port strategy and operations through
objective analysis. This organization
or team o experts, must include repre-
sentatives with business knowledge as
well as analytical expertise. The team is
permanent with well-dened roles and
responsibilities; it is not a temporary
group that gets called on an ad hoc basis
to address a specic request requiring
analytical resources. An initial, tempo-
rary structure may be used as the rst
phase to justiy moving to a permanent
CoE team. The temporary structure may
include virtual teams, outsourced services
or other arrangements based on the spe-
cic requirements o each organization.
As the use o analytics in many sectors
o the economy increases, business
leaders are developing a greater ap-
preciation or the value and power o
analyzing data and making better deci-
sions. Likewise, the advances in many
types o analytical technologies have
encouraged organizations to make more
and better act-based decisions, validate
assumptions and identiy root causes o
business problems.
However, a large percentage o organi-
zations are still struggling with several
aspects o using analytics, including how
and where to start, how to take the next
step and how to change their internal
culture so that analytics becomes inte-
gral to the decisions that matter most.
Analytic centers o excellence (CoEs) can
help organizations deal with these chal-
lenges. Regardless o how much or howlittle analytic competency an organiza-
tion may have, analytic centers o excel-
lence provide a means to derive more
value through greater insight and better
decisions. Lets explore the structure and
role o analytic CoEs, and the various
organizational aspects that need to be
considered to eectively deploy analytics
in an organization.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsMake the most o your analytical talent|P17
It is important to point out that there are
many types o CoEs (also called com-
petency centers or centers o expertise),
depending on the ocus and scope.
Some o the ocus areas or these
teams include:
Enterprise information manage-ment, which covers all aspects o
inormation management across
the organization.
Dataintegration.
Information delivery (reporting and
perormance management).
Analytics.
Specic technologies,suchasSAS
centers o excellence or ERP types
o CoEs.
Specicbusinessfunctions,suchas
customer insight or nance CoEs.
Analytic center o excellence tasks
A well-implemented analytic CoE should
be a permanent, ormal organizational
structure (team) with support and spon-
sorship rom executive-level managers.
It should be owned and staed by the
organization and include representation
rom business, analytical experts and IT
with well-dened ocus or roles, respon-
sibilities and processes.
Collaboration with all appropriate stake-holders is essential especially the IT
and enterprise data warehouse (EDW)
teams to infuence the structure o the
current EDW environment in support o
analytics and analytic best practices.
The team should be committed to pro-
viding and managing robust analytical
development environments, including
data marts, and to providing and man-
aging processes to push results and
decision-making logic to production/operational environments.
It is important to structure the data and
processes to acilitate the application
o analytics, provide the appropriate
level o governance (or repeatability,
auditability, knowledge management,
etc.) and enable closed-loop learning or
continuous improvement.
Build your A-team
In data there is opportunity. However, a
gap is growing between our vast data
stores and the useul insights we can de-
rive rom them. A generation ago we got
the most out o what little data we had,
comparatively speaking. Today were not
always getting as much as we can rom
our data. Succeeding with analytics is
both a technical and organizational chal-
lenge. Whats missing more oten than not
is the person with the right combinationo skills who can translate data into intel-
ligent and timely decisions.
The Institute or Advanced Analytics at
North Carolina State University was cre-
ated in 2007 with a ocused mission to
educate a new kind o analytics-savvy
proessional. We listened closely to em-
ployers and then custom-built an entirely
new learning experience to address their
needs. The result is the Master o Sci-
ence in analytics (MSA), an innovative
10-month proessional degree that com-bines technical knowledge o quantita-
tive methods with teamwork and com-
munication skills, as well as hands-on
experience using industry-leading tools
with real data rom sponsoring compa-
nies. The MSA curriculum gives students
the contextual understanding they need
to apply analytics to real-world busi-
ness problems.
By Michael Rappa, Director, Institute
or Advanced Analytics
Learn more:analytics.ncsu.edu
http://analytics.ncsu.edu/http://analytics.ncsu.edu/ -
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www.sas.com/cioinsights
The analytic CoE team should be
responsible or the ollowing: Supportingandpromotingthe
eective use o analytics within
the organization.
Developing andpromotinganalytical
best practices to acilitate the identi-
cation o analytical requirements (in-
cluding new data sources and metrics
to measure their eorts/contributions).
Applyinganalyticstobusinessprob-
lems, and more importantly, interpret-
ing and distributing results.
Educatingtheorganizationonthe
importance o data quality.
Fostering greater analytic compe-
tency to support and guide more
act-based and timely decisions in
the pursuit o achieving organizational
priorities and objectives.
Using available analytical skills and
resources to optimize their con-
tributions to high-priority projects
and problems.
Graduallychangingthecultureofthe
organization to always apply critical
thinking and to demand the valida-
tion o business assumptions and
strategies. This includes ostering a
learning culture one that encour-
ages experimentation and provides
permission to ail.
Continuouslydevelopinganalytical talent.
Currently, a large percentage o analytic
centers o excellence can be describedas specialized, shared-service organiza-
tions. These organizations receive re-
quests rom the business community to
apply analytics to solve problems. There
is no question that these types o struc-
tures provide value to the organization
but they may not be able to change the
internal culture without having a much
closer connection and integration with
the various business units where better
decisions could be enabled.
When used in an ad hoc way and without
the right level o executive sponsorship
these shared-service organizations are
limited in their ability to have more lasting
eects on the way decisions are made
and the quality o those decisions.
Making your analytic center o
excellence strategic and eective
The best implementations o analytic
CoEs have these traits:
Apartnershipwithbusiness
stakeholders or ongoing success.
High-levelexecutivesponsorship.
Sufcientprominenceinthe
organizational hierarchy to have
visibility and impact.
Areputationforprovenresults,excel-
lent work ethic and ability to deploy
results that aect decision making.
Such strategic implementations will havethe highest chance o promoting wide-
spread, analytically driven decisions and
suracing new opportunities.
P18|Make the most o your analytical talent
Four dimensions o youranalytic inrastructure
The application and eective use o
analytics requires more than just tech-
nology. In practice, technology is the
easy part. The other challenging com-
ponents are related to many aspects o
the organization itsel. To achieve the
greatest degree o success with analyt-
ics, organizations have to consider the
ollowing our critical components or
dimensions o what ultimately compris-
es the analytics inrastructure:
Humancapitalandskills.
Internalinformationandknowledge processes.
Technologyinfrastructure.
Organizationalculture.
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www.sas.com/cioinsights
ONLINE
Analytic centers of excellence webcast:
www.sas.com/cio-coecast
Analytic centers of excellence white paper:
www.sas.com/cio-coepaper
All CoEs share many common compo-
nents and characteristics: Sponsorshipandgovernance.
Analyticsprogrammanagement.
Datastewardship.
Internalprocesses.
Technologyavailability.
Datamanagement.
Informationdelivery.
Infrastructuremanagement.
This is a comprehensive list o all possible
areas that may need to be addressed to
ensure proper and eective implementa-
tion o an analytic center o excellence.
It is important to point out that not all o
these unctions will be managed by the
analytic CoE team. The point is to ensure
that these topics are considered so they
can be addressed. An assessment will
evaluate how these areas are unctioning,
and how to best use existing resourcesto enable the analytic experts to ocus
primarily on solving business problems
rather than other data management and
quality challenges.
Approaches or establishing
an analytic CoE
The objective o analytic centers o
excellence is ocused on maximiz-
ing the organizational benet rom the
investment in data and analytics. Analytic
centers o excellence, and any othertype o centers o excellence, are not
one-size-ts-all. The ollowing key areas
must be considered as organizations
think about this valuable concept and
about the approach to establishing an
analytic CoE or their own environment:
Degree o centralization versus
decentralization. Many organization-al aspects need to be considered to
determine the right approach. Some
o these actors include the size o the
organization, level o reach (global vs.
local), the structure o the business
units and technical and IT resources,
the existing culture and level o col-
laboration between groups, the distri-
bution o analytical resources, etc.
Executive support. The support
rom an executive level is essential
or empowering the analytic CoE to
produce accurate, repeatable and
timely results rom applying analyt-
ics. Collaboration and discussion
between groups are necessary in
many cases to collect the require-
ments and data to apply analyt-
ics and, more importantly, to use
the results in the decision-making
process. Many successul applica-
tions o analytics are promoted by
the support o an executive in abusiness unit that has a clear vision
and need to use analytics. Other im-
plementations can have a broader
scope to cover multiple business
units or even the entire enterprise.
The common requirement is to have
high-level management support.
Anne Milley works closely with Product Marketing,
Product Management and R&D to drive SAS analytic
marketing strategy and direction. She began working with
SAS sotware while nishing her thesis on bank ailure
prediction at the Federal Home Loan Bank o Dallas. She
continued her use o SAS at 7-Eleven Inc. as a senior busi-
ness consultant. Milley has a Master o Arts in economics
rom Florida Atlantic University, did post-graduate work at
Rheinisch-Westlische Technische Hochschule Aachen and
is procient in German.
Make the most o your analytical talent|P19
Analytical skills. The availability o
analytical resources, skill levels andresponsibilities are other critical ac-
tors. These analytical resources
clearly are needed to move orward
However, there are options or orga-
nizations to explore i these resources
are not available, i they are too ew o
i additional training is needed. Some
o these options include outsourcing
some or all the analytical work initially
or working with SAS and other part-
ners in a collaborative way to provide
the initial resources while acquiringnew resources or training existing
sta members.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP20|Good news or retail CIOs
Good news or retail CIOsBusiness analytics technologies are more than just a trend
The last ew years have been hard o
retailers. Sales are down and margins
are tight. Consumers are saving, not
spending and their expectations are
changing. Theyre increasingly mobile
and increasingly social online, so i you
dont have the size, style or level o cus-
tomer service they expect, their entire
social circle may hear about it in writing
But there is good news or retail CIOsIn an industry where technology has
traditionally taken a back seat to ash-
ions and trends, theres a newound
interest in solving retailers most data-
intense problems including purchas-
ing, merchandising, markdowns and
customer relationships with business
analytics technologies.
Read on to hear how three CIOs at
well-known retail brands are using
SAS to solve business problems and
improve automation, collaboration and
inormation visibility.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsGood news or retail CIOs|P21
Accelerate ast ashion with SAS
How can you ensure the right assort-
ment o merchandise in the ideal mix
o sizes at each store on a consistent
basis? Ask The Wet Seal. This ast-ash-
ion retailer o contemporary apparel and
accessory items uses SAS Size Proling
to transorm historical sales data into ac-
curate projections o uture demand by
size. Integrated with existing merchan-
dising systems, it applies this intelligenceto purchasing and allocation workfows.
The result is optimal, store-specic size
proles that match local demand.
According to Jon Kubo, Vice Presi-
dent and CIO at The Wet Seal, the
implementation had a tight deadline, but
was delivered on time and on budget.
SAS industry-experienced consultants
delivered the solution in phases and
were able to provide early improvements
in size proling calculations.
Because Wet Seal is a ast-ashion re-
tailer, 85 percent o its products are not
replenished. Size proling is important
to us not only or buying the right size
breaks, says Kubo, but also because
we only get to buy a product once, with
the objective o selling through it quickly.
On the allocation side, we have to know
what the correct sizes need to be per
store. The Wet Seal is moving toward a
localized, customer-centric approach to
pricing, assortment and size at the local
store level. Size proling is our rst step
in doing that, says Kubo. In our market,
this is where we will create growth and
gain an advantage.
According to Kubo, a key insight deliv-
ered by the SAS Size Proling solutionis the ability to calculate lost sales at
both the chain and store-specic levels.
I a store didnt sell a particular product
because it wasnt in stock, the SAS so-
lution can eciently help The Wet Seal
look at similar stores in a cluster and im-
ply why the store might have made the
same sale.
The implementation had a tight dead-
line, but was delivered on time and
on budget, says Kubo. SAS industry-
experienced consultants delivered
the solution in phases and were able
to provide early improvements in size
proling calculations.
Traditional business intelligence in retail
has reached a plateau o useulness,
Kubo says. We look or specialized ana-
lytical applications that oer automated
analytical capabilities, reducing the need
or more human resources. SAS Size
Proling is a good example o this. While
most retailers rely on manual processes
we look or technologies that augment
our limited resources and help raise intel-
ligence about our operations and make
decisions on a more automated, ecien
and statistical basis.
Go global with SAS
Steano Gaggion is the Senior Vice
President and Chie Inormation Oce
at Brooks Brothers, the oldest cloth-
ing retailer in the US. Since introducing
SAS, the companys inventory is bette
managed, store managers have more
accurate inormation, and personalized
marketing campaigns are executed at a
lower cost.
SAS is a solid and fexible technology
that is really a true enabler, says Gag-
gion. Our business could double o
triple in the next ve years, and we wil
have no technical limitations with SAS.
In recent years, the company has
taken its unmatched reputation o
tradition, value and high quality overseas
opening stores in places like Shanghai
Toronto and Hong Kong. The challenge
Traditional business intelligence in retailhas reached a plateau o useulness. Welook or specialized analytical applications
that oer automated analytical capabilities,reducing the need or more human resources.SAS Size Proling is a good example o this.
Jon Kubo, Vice President and CIO at The Wet Seal
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP22|Good news or retail CIOs
or executives is to replicate the BrooksBrothers reputation or excellent quality
while juggling the demands o a global
supply chain and retail operations spread
over our continents.
The answer is to empower store manag-
ers and vendors to better manage the
business. Store managers receive key
reports, provided through SAS, to help
them nd opportunities to improve store
perormance and customer satisaction.
The retailer also collaborates with vendor
manuacturing partners to give them
an accurate view o sales and demand,
beneting both sides o the supply chain
resulting in having the right merchan-
dise in the right stores at the right time.
The retailer has even used SAS to help
its charitable endeavors. Brooks Broth-
ers supports the St. Jude Childrens
Research Hospital. To encourage sales
associates to solicit donations duringits annual Thanks and Giving campaign,
the company tracked perormance daily
through SAS. Donations increased by
50 percent and the perormance data
helped keep sales associates energized.
The company chose SAS because it can
grow with Brooks Brothers in scale,
business results and business capabili-
ties. SAS helps us maintain our level o
eciency, collaboration and inormationvisibility across our global business,
Gaggion says.
Campaign success with SAS
Retailers have invested heavily in loyalty
programs over the past decade, with the
hopes o analyzing customer data and
segmenting customers to oer just the
right discount coupon to one customer,
or the catalog with the perect mix o
goods to another.
In reality, ew retailers have success-
ully mastered that level o segmentation.
Instead, the customer data is gathered,
but unused. Or its periodically shipped
to a vendor who takes weeks to prepare
a campaign list. Thats the scenario that
Chicos FAS Inc. aced. The Fort Myers,
FL-based company operates more than
1,000 boutiques throughout the US, US
Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico under the
Chicos, White House | Black Market andSoma brands. The boutiques eature
chic jackets, sophisticated tops, elegant
dresses, jewelry and more. The com-
pany also markets to consumers through
catalog and online channels.
We couldnt automate processes, there
were a lot o operational ineciencies, it
was infexible and we were using low-
level tools. It led us to look at dierent
ways to operate our campaign manage-ment, explains Chie Inormation Oce
Gary King.
But that all changed with SAS OnDe-
mand: Marketing Automation. Chicos
soon saw validation or its SAS deci-
sion ease o use became apparent in
speed to results. The company now seg-
ments catalog mailings and dierentiates
promotion eorts or maximum impact
Trendsetting customers receive dieren
catalogs than discount shoppers, and
online customers receive e-mails geared
to their buying habits.
Other improvements include midpromo
tion corrections so Chicos can quickly
change its promotional strategies i
rst attempts arent working. Plus, the
retailer is bringing lapsed customers
back to Chicos.
The dierence or the campaign team isnight and day, says King. We are able
to turn around programs much more
quickly. A campaign takes our days to
pull together versus 30 days prior to us-
ing SAS. This has allowed the team to
create more targeted campaigns.
Plus, the impact o the analysis Chicos
has derived rom SAS has delighted
executives. Our executives are so ex-
SAS is a solid and fexible technology that
is really a true enabler. Our business coulddouble or triple in the next ve years, and we
will have no technical limitations with SAS.
Stefano Gaggion, Senior Vice Presidentand CIO, Brooks Brothers
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsGood news or retail CIOs|P23
ONLINE
Brooks Brothers success:
www.sas.com/cio-brooksbros
Chicos success:
www.sas.com/cio-chicos
The Wet Seal success:
www.sas.com/cio-wetseal
The dierence or thecampaign team is nightand day A campaigntakes our days to pulltogether versus 30 daysprior to using SAS. Thishas allowed the teamto create more targetedcampaigns.
Gary King, CIO, Chicos
How should retail CIOsthink about analytics?
Speakers on a recent retail industry panel
made a strong case or using analytics
to put customers at the center o the
retail business.
Jim Bacos, Director, Retail and Consumer
Goods Practice o Oliver Wyman, cau-tioned that successul analytics projects
are hard work, can take years to ully
implement and typically require change
throughout the organization but most
retailers simply must make the eort.
The old way o doing work and the old
way o being successul is becoming
more and more extinct.
Bacos encouraged large retailers in par-
ticular to look beyond expansion and in-
creasing store space, and ocus instead
on small, incremental changes that when applied to thousands o SKUs and
billions o transactions can really add up
to make a dierence.
Giles Pavey, Head o Analysis at
dunnhumby, told a story o a grocer who
made a risky decision to keep budget-
conscious customers happy. When the
executives noticed its stores were los-
ing sales to other low-cost retailers, they
launched a range o 600 store-branded
discount products. Initially, the move
cannibalized sales and total revenuewent down. But the loyalty aect over
time has shown the long-term results to
be positive.
This story illustrates another o Paveys
points regarding the importance o mea-
suring results: You should measure the
results o changes you do and really un-
derstand where youre doing things right,
says Pavey.
cited about the insights they are gainingabout the customer, where she shops
and the department that brought her
into the brand. It was an incredible
moment to partner with the marketing
managers and watch the work come to
lie, says Charlie White, Vice President o
Customer Relationship Marketing.
Its all about the customer
In retail, perhaps more than any other
industry, its all about the customer.
The best retail CIOs understand this
act. Whether youre implementing an
on-demand solution to reduce inventory
or an on-site implementation to improve
merchandising, the ocus should always
be on the customer. Continue to ask,How will reduced inventories and bet-
ter merchandising help the customer?
Keeping your best customers in mind will
help to ensure that analytics technolo-
gies are more than just a trend at your
company too.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP24|How to transition IT rom cost center to value center
How to transition IT romcost center to value centerData integration and language translation bring eciencies
A company whose product is inorma-
tion should regard its IT department as
its actory foor, the place where in-
novation happens and customer value
is produced. Yet many IT organizations
in these companies struggle to make
the transition rom cost center to value
center because they are mired in time-
consuming operational processes, many
o them manual, that add little perceived
value. As credit bureau Emcredit discov-ered, however, it is possible to turn that
situation around with the right sotware
solutions and automated processes.
Emcredit is the rst credit bureau in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) and enjoys
ocial status in the Emirate o Dubai,
Data: the backbone o the business
Emad Khatib, Emcredits CIO, real-
izes every day that the bureaus repu-
tation depends on providing accurate
inormation on bank customers. His
main responsibility is to take data rom
multiple operational sources and turn
it into high-quality inormation that is
easily available in the right ormat. Data
is the backbone o our business, so i
we dont have these processes undertight control, we will not succeed, says
Khatib. In addition, Emcredit must iden-
tiy genuinely bad risks while reducing
the number o consumer disputes to
the absolute minimum. You dont want
consumers and businesses challenging
a decision that was made on the basis
Now our employees only intervene when there is anerror or an alert, and in the meantime we have retrained
them to ocus on customer outreach and other tasksthat are more rewarding or them, and more protable
or Emcredit. This has enabled us to transition theIT department rom a cost center to a value center.
Emad Khatib, CIO, Emcredit
meaning that banks are mandated to
deal with Emcredit. Certied to inter-
national inormation security standards
(ISO 27001), Emcredit obtains a wealth
o data rom a variety o sources: banks,
nancial institutions and government
agencies. Like all credit bureaus around
the world, its mission is to assist its cli-
ents in maintaining healthy relationships
with customers while managing credit
risk. It does this by providing inorma-tion, reports and decision support tools
that improve their clients evaluation
o customer lie cycles. However, un-
like most credit bureaus, Emcredits
scope is very broad: Emcredit provides
a 360-degree view o both commercial
and consumer customers.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsHow to transition IT rom cost center to value center|P25
o inaccurate data, such as an incorrectdate o birth, explains Khatib. This re-
fects badly on our customers, which, in
turn, refects badly on Emcredit.
When it was in its start-up phase, Em-
credit relied on manual processes to
extract raw data in a specic ormat,
which meant a lot o back-and-orth
discussions with the providers about
how and when the data could be de-
livered: ater all, as commercial and
government agencies, these providershad their own internal priorities; an ex-
ternal credit agency would have to wait
its turn.
Being based in the Gul region, Emcredit
aced an additional challenge. Much o
the data was in Arabic and, moreover,
many o the systems generating the data
ran in Arabic. Consequently Emcredit
had to translate inormation into English
and then back-eed it into data tables. In
act, it was a little more complex than that.
The margin o error was high because
rst we had to determine i the inorma-
tion was in proper Arabic and i it could
be translated into English, says Khatib.
Only ater translation could the data be
cleansed, validated, standardized and
merged also manually beore it was
nally stored and moved into production.
Accelerated data acquisition
Emcredit knew that its uture successwould require it to accelerate the data
acquisition process while reducing op-
erational costs. It could only do this by
automating key processes such as the
identication, extraction and transla-
tion o Arabic data and data validation.
Above all it had to minimize the eort
required rom the data source providers,
on whose goodwill Emcredit depended.
Emcredit selected SAS to integrate -nancial and personal data rom multiple
providers and to standardize it in a single
specic le ormat. The company con-
sidered several vendors, but SAS scored
highest on the three key criteria o peror-
mance, accuracy and scalability. SAS not
only met our immediate criteria but also
scored highest when we considered our
long-term objectives, explains Khatib.
Previously we had no choice but to deal
with dierent ormats or each separateprovider. Each bank would have its own
specic rules or data validation and
matching. SAS provided a data ormat
that was fexible enough to accept all di-
erent source providers ormats without
requiring manual intervention. Moreover,
we can add urther commercial data
sources without any signicant eort.
A platorm or more rewarding work
SAS could also recognize Arabic tokens,
which is not a straightorward process (in
Arabic, dierent tokens can be used or
words with the same meaning) and ull
string names (such as the ull legal en-
tity name o a company, as opposed to
the commercial name). Beore Emcredit
translates anything through its inter-
nal translation team, it matches terms
against the hundereds o thousands o
records in Emcredits dictionary. I any
tokens do not nd a match, these are
sent to the translation team and the newterm is added to the SAS dictionary, thus
progressively diminishing the amount o
human intervention required.
We have eliminated many manual
processes but this does not mean we
have reduced our headcount, says
Khatib. Instead, the SAS implemen-
tation has enabled us to ocus on
value-adding activities.
Previously, we had three ull-time em-ployees permanently sitting in ront o a
computer screen, working on integra-
tion- and translation-related tasks. Now
our employees only intervene when there
is an error or an alert, and in the mean-
time we have retrained them to ocus on
customer outreach and other tasks that
are more rewarding or them, and more
protable or Emcredit. This has enabled
us to transition the IT department rom a
cost center to a value center.
The SAS implementation has greatly in-
creased our data coverage because we
can acquire data at a much aster pace
We are also moving data much aste
rom staging to production, which means
that the inormation we provide to ou
customers is more up to date. SAS has
also improved our validation rules and
processes, which has raised the qual-
ity o our data, providing a signicantly
higher hit rate when our customers are
looking or data matches.
Improved data quality is a huge ben-
et that goes to the heart o Emcredits
business proposition: to provide banks
and other clients with accurate credit
inormation. Khatib concludes, This
enables our clients to make quick and
air decisions, minimizing disputes and
helping them to build more protable
customer relationships.
ONLINE
Data quality blog:
www.sas.com/cio-dblog
Data Prep 101 Webcast:
www.sas.com/cio-dataprepcast
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsP26|Running IT as a business
Running IT as a businessSeven steps to aligning IT with the business
By Kate Morton, Global Practice Manager or Costing and Proftability, SAS Australia
Seven steps to aligning IT with
the business
The massive growth in IT over the past
decade has moved it rom being a back-
oce support unction to a critical busi-
ness unit. IT now ranks among the top
ve expenditures o most companies.
CIOs have to show how the money is
spent, the returns they are getting or
their investments, and how IT is driving
corporate perormance. This increased
role requires ocus, vision and, above
all, transparency into services, costs,demand, processes and impact on cor-
porate perormance.
Cost management and transparency
For the CIO to compete or resources,
the IT unction needs to operate as a
business within a business providing
valuable services to the rest o the orga-
nization. The CIO must eectively edu-
cate the organization and provide clearly
articulated and relevant cost inormation.
A detailed understanding o the cos
within the IT business provides clear and
positive advantages to the CIO and the
wider organization:
Ensuringoptimalresourceallocation
to areas o greatest value.
Moreeffectiveallocationofresources
to areas o need.
ReducingcomplexitywithinITand
simpliying internal processes.
Moreinformedbudgeting
(capital and operating) and pricingo new projects.
GreaterunderstandingofITcapacity
and ability or delivery.
AbilitytolinkITinvestmentsto
overall organizational benets.
Facilitatingpracticesandtoolssuch
as total cost o ownership (TCO) and
return on investment (ROI).
The benefts o aligningIT with the business
Improvemanagementcontrol.
Understandandcommunicatethenancial and non-nancial value oeach IT project and operation.
Complywithlegislativerequirements.
ReallocateITresourcestoprojectso most importance to the business.
FacilitatetheeliminationofITprojects that are not delivering.
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www.sas.com/cioinsightsRunning IT as a business|P27
The importance o chargeback
It is dicult to maximize returns rom IT
when the product appears to be ree to
customers. Ideally, IT operates as a ser-
vice provider with a catalog o products
and services that are aligned with cus-
tomer needs and corporate goals. For
this, IT needs:
Accuratepricingforitsservicesthat
refects the cost to provide them.
Anunderstandingofwhatdrivesboth demand and cost.
Anequitable,repeatableand
accurate method to track and invoice
customers based on their usage o
the services.
Toencourageend-useraccountability
or the return on investments.
Cost control is the greatest benet that
comes rom IT chargeback. Gartner
research has shown that these costsavings oten exceed 15 percent in the
rst year, rom reduced demand and
smarter service use, and SAS has seen
these results refected in its customers
across the world.
Chargeback gives clear transparency
into the benets and the value that IT
brings, and the impact on the bottom line
means better relationships with the rest
o the organization.
Budgeting and planning
IT nancial management processes are
oten resource-intensive, involving the
manual collection o nancial data that
is scattered across the enterprise. With
a lack o data to support accurate ore-
casts, the resulting budget is oten based
on political biases.