SAS Institute Inc. and Marketsoft Corp. each aim to help corporations engaged in customer relationship management share and access information from across the enterprise.
SAS earlier this month introduced application packages for the telecommunications and banking industries—the first two in a series of SAS Industry Intelligence Solutions that the company is releasing for vertical industries.
These application sets include a common data model that defines business entities and processes for a given industry. Components are integrated around that data model, which ensures the sharing of information across the enterprise, said officials of the Cary, N.C., company.
Applications available include credit scoring, customer retention and segmentation, cross- and up-selling, marketing automation, and strategic performance management.
A SAS Industry Intelligence Solution for the insurance industry is due in September, SAS officials said.
Rob Epstein, president of On-Site Database Marketing Consultants Inc., is working on a database marketing project at Cingular Wireless and uses SAS technology for data mining and online analytical processing. Epstein said Industry Intelligence Solution for Telecommunications contains applications hed be interested in for Cingular, particularly customer segmentation and retention and cross- selling and up-selling. These would let Cingular better manage relationships with its 23 million customers.
“Were getting into the world of one-to-one marketing,” said Epstein, in Atlanta. “Getting the right message to the right customer at the right time.”
Epstein said Cingular would also be interested in the performance management application to better align and optimize use of its IT resources as the company seeks to consolidate various systems and phase out older technology.
Meanwhile, MarketSoft last week announced MarketSoft Cross Sell Hub, an application to help businesses sell more products and services to current customers.
Cross Sell Hub, targeted at the financial services industry, is, in effect, a business process engine that connects opportunities—such as sales referrals or leads generated from marketing campaigns—to the line of business and channel best able to close the sale. Using Cross Sell Hub, any customer-facing employee, whether in sales, marketing or the call center, will be able to identify cross-sell opportunities and refer them to the specific group within a company that can create an appropriate offer, said MarketSoft officials in Lexington, Mass.
Cross Sell Hub is available now. Pricing for the suite starts at $500,000.