SAS, long a kingpin of the data analytics software and services business, is upping the ante in its modeling department.
The Cary, N.C.-based company on June 16 announced SAS Factory Miner, a new-gen tool designed to speed up the productivity of data science teams. Factory Miner, set to ship in July, sports a Web-based, drag-and-drop interface that automatically builds and revises very large numbers of models that predict future business outcomes.
Using this tool, data scientists can pinpoint poorly performing business models, then investigate and improve them. They can also share model templates, results and best practices to improve collaboration among teams. These data models also can help retailers identify the best customers for a marketing campaign, for example, or health insurers uncover fraudulent claims.
Factory Miner uses prebuilt or customized templates that can interactively compare models to find the best performers. Lesser performing models can be pinpointed and improved. Well-performing models can boost business results by controlling customer churn, personalizing offers, predicting demand, managing risk and other actions.
The software includes automated model development, selection and deployment capabilities, and machine learning, SAS said.
Other key features:
*SAS Forecasting now includes a new Web-based SAS Forecast Server client. This combines the functions of two existing clients while adding new functionality: demand classification segmentation for targeted modeling; multi-stage modeling; exception rules to track series that meet certain criteria; forecast accuracy tracking across iterations, and parallel execution of modeling tasks.
*SAS Enterprise Miner has a new Bayesian Network node and other enhancements to its machine-learning capabilities, as well as improved Random Forest, Support Vector Machines and Decision Trees.
*SAS Contextual Analysis has added support for 13 document languages, improved rule writing and interactive rule testing, and enhanced sentiment analysis controls.
Factory Miner is part of an overall update to SAS Analytics, a software lineup of tools that provide data mining, statistical analysis, forecasting, text analytics, optimization and other data science functions.
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