SAS Institute Inc. announced Monday the general availability of version 4 of its Marketing Automation application, the first application to be released on the Cary, N.C.-based companys SAS 9 platform, which shipped in late March.
The new product was announced at the 29th SAS User Group International conference in Montreal.
This version of SAS Marketing Automation features a redesigned user interface that adds role-based capabilities, providing custom interfaces for different participants in the marketing automation process such as analytic modelers, campaign managers and marketing executives, SAS officials said.
SAS Marketing Automation 4 takes advantage of infrastructure improvements in the SAS 9 platform to embed analytics in the application, allowing greater ease of use for business users. SAS 9 is a more open platform, allowing for Marketing Automation to enjoy greater interoperability with other SAS and non-SAS technologies, company officials said.
Customers will be able to fine-tune the analytic engine in Marketing Automation 4 to include their own insights about customer behaviors, incorporate internal best practices and leverage existing data warehouses and CRM systems. In addition, the new data management capabilities include easier access to data as well as the ability to define available data in business terms so that marketers can accomplish their tasks without IT intervention, officials said.
SAS Marketing Automation 4 has also been updated to support easier compliance with privacy legislation and regulations, providing central control over metadata, business rules and data management logic. Administrators can provision access to data and promulgate changes to contact rules from a single point of entry.
Likewise, chief privacy officers can create and enforce common compliance rules across campaign processes managed by individual campaign managers in this version. SAS Marketing Automation 4 can consolidate an overview of all campaigns to ensure that campaign activities comply with corporate marketing processes.
SAS plans to deliver several other solutions on the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform this year including risk management, performance management, financial management, activity based management, supplier relationship management and IT management.
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