Analytics available everywhere on cloud-native SAS Viya

13th January 2021

SAS Institute

Alex Lynn

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Every retail or consumer goods company would like to increase forecast accuracy to improve margins and reduce safety stock levels while simultaneously connecting with consumers in a more meaningful way. SAS has a legacy of helping retail and CPG customers do just that by developing deeper insights that inform users to make more confident decisions. Now SAS is taking those capabilities to the cloud by offering access to its powerful retail analytics built on the popular SAS Viya platform.

Building on the Microsoft partnership, the Predict & Plan Consumer Demand offering is now available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

SAS has long been regarded as a specialist in retail demand planning and forecasting capabilities. The Forrester Wave: Retail Planning, Q1 2020 report said SAS ‘proved its ability to tackle hard optimisation issues by demonstrating above-par application architecture, assortment optimisation, and aggregate demand management. It has potential to improve customer segmentation and merchandise financial planning’.

The analyst firm also cited SAS as a ‘best fit for brands and retailers that need the security of a large vendor with a massive ecosystem of implementers, but that also have the ability to: 1) extend retail planning applications using a proven platform to deploy sophisticated applications, without disrupting on premise infrastructure’.

“Having a solid customer engagement strategy in place is now more reliant than ever on digital transformation,” said Andrew Fowkes, Global Retail Practice at SAS. “To support this SAS is making it easier for cloud-based analytics to be accessible for every employee at an organisation.”