The View From Here: New Category or Same Old Marketing?

March 30, 2009

The most reported upon news at SAS Global Forum last week in Washington, D.C., was a presentation by Jim Davis, SAS Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer.

According to Network World, Davis said that “business intelligence” is giving way to “business analytics.” The new term has a lot of connotations. At the highest level, it deals with the ability to harness data far more flexibly and in a real time manner. The article describes the elements of SAS’ approach as a new way to address:

…data integration, collaboration, data analytics, new algorithms, and what-if scenarios for forecasting.

The company’s press release provides more detail. Business analytics, it said, focuses on:

…extending the power of SAS to new non-technical users; achieving insight much faster as conditions change; increasing collaboration across diverse business units; and maximizing organizational efficiencies. The result is increased profitability whether economic winds are blowing hot or cold.

Davis’ speech, as reported, and the press release both tie the initiative to the poor economy. Companies that take advantage now, the thinking goes, will better weather the recession and be in a superior position once the downturn ends.

A company’s marketing efforts exist in a parallel universe than its products. In many cases, those efforts overlap. Sometimes, however, they don’t. An effort to coin a new term—and thereby carve out a niche in the marketplace – will occur whether or not the platform it describes is worthy. In other cases, the technology indeed does rate a category all its own. Is the SAS platform worthy? The experts certainly have no shortage of opinion.

What can be said, however, is that the economic situation, combined with the flood of data generated by Web 2.0 platforms, offers big challenges and opportunities to organizations and their BI vendors. It is clear that the task at hand is changing radically. In that sense, SAS –- at least its marketing department — has it exactly right.

–Carl Weinschenk

Posted by Carl · Filed Under Business Intelligence, Risk and Compliance