SAS tags RFID as intelligence opportunity

SAS, the leader in business intelligence, is uniquely equipped to help companies organise, harness, analyse and understand radio frequency identification (RFID) data, as well as data from any other external or internal source. Today at SAS Forum International 2004, SAS announced that all of its solutions can be configured to accept, analyse and deliver value from RFID data.

With technology from SAS, including the new SAS 9 technology platform, SAS solutions are built on a solid framework of data management and analytic technology that can scale to any size database - even those containing the expected massive amounts of RFID data.

While still in the very early stages of adoption and roll-out, RFID systems hold great promise for retailers, manufacturers, third-party logistics providers and other organisations. Analysis of RFID data can help these organisations reduce inventory uncertainty and increase efficiency in their supply chains, make better use of corporate resources, improve customer service and get a broader and more complete view of their internal operations.

Yet a major challenge remains. The amount of data that will eventually be generated by RFID systems is truly staggering. As RFID technology becomes more and more widespread, companies adopting it will face the challenge of bringing together and managing huge volumes of RFID data. These companies will need to differentiate between meaningful data and vast amounts of "noise" in very large databases.

SAS's data management offerings, including software for ETL (extraction, transformation and load) and data quality help companies bring together, organise and cleanse RFID and other data. Then SAS's powerful predictive analytics help these companies distinguish what's important from what isn't, uncover patterns and trends, and identify opportunities for improvement. Finally, SAS's broad solution offerings can help organisations analyse RFID data as part of their performance management efforts.

Among the RFID-compatible solutions are the SAS Retail Intelligence Solutions, a suite of integrated software offerings that addresses the biggest challenges facing retailers. Launched last month at the ECR Conference in Brussels, SAS Retail Intelligence Solutions help retailers understand and predict customer behaviour, net profitability of merchandise and the effectiveness of promotional campaigns across multiple channels.

Armed with these insights, retailers can formulate and implement consistent business strategies and performance metrics across the organisation, improve customer service and maximise profitability.

"SAS Retail Intelligence Solutions, like all SAS solutions, is RFID-compliant and can immediately handle all RFID data, from the supply chain to point-of-sale transactions," said Jim Davis, senior vice president at SAS. "RFID tags may eventually change the way manufacturers and retailers manage their supply chains, and SAS is ready to help them with our industry-leading business intelligence platform and the solutions built on it. Through our data management and analytic software, SAS will help retailers, manufacturers and others turn huge amounts of RFID data into usable intelligence that will help them compete and succeed."

The four components of SAS Retail Intelligence Solutions - SAS Customer Insight for Retail, SAS Supply Chain Costing for Retail, SAS Promotional Effectiveness for Retail and SAS Strategic Performance Management for Retail - build upon SAS's expertise in data management and predictive analytics through almost three decades of successful engagements with retail clients. Underlying the entire suite is the SAS Retail Intelligence Architecture, an "out of the box" enterprise-wide data model that contains customer, retail outlet, supply chain and transaction information (down to the stock keeping unit, or SKU, level). By reducing implementation time and project risk, SAS's unique architecture speeds retailers' ROI.

Of the four component solutions within SAS Retail Intelligence Solutions (http://www.sas.com/industry/retail/ris.html), two in particular are relevant to RFID data:

* SAS Supply Chain Costing for Retail combines advanced data management and a retail-specific costing methodology. This provides retailers with financial visibility into their supply chains by helping them consistently measure and analyse the true supply chain costs and net product profitability as products move post-production through distribution centers, stores and customer checkouts. Using this solution and incorporating RFID data, retailers can model alternate scenarios for understanding the financial impact of merchandising and supply chain (such as inventory- and asset-management) decisions. SAS Supply Chain Costing for Retail helps retailers make fact-based decisions about product assortments, new product introductions, promotions and events, and changes to their supply chains.

* SAS Strategic Performance Management for Retail gives retailers the ability to translate business strategy into actions that can be quickly measured and monitored throughout the organisation. This solution includes retail-specific corporate scorecarding, key performance indicators, mapping and knowledge base visualisation that enable formulation of organisational strategy. In combination with other SAS Retail Intelligence Solutions offerings, retailers can surface business intelligence throughout their organisations via a strategic road map that they can use to set corporate targets, monitor performance and support consistent decision-making. This performance management system can act upon data from across the enterprise - including RFID and other product or location data as well as customer, financial, time and quality data.

SAS 9 - released on 30 March - represents a true breakthrough in both business intelligence and performance management. SAS 9 is faster, more efficient and easier to use than its predecessors. It can accommodate changing organisational needs without any loss of efficiency. The new platform connects SAS applications so they work together transparently, and it also seamlessly communicates with other data sources and programmes. SAS 9 includes the SAS Intelligence Platform, a broad set of integrated software for unmatched data integration, easy-to-use business reporting and unparalleled analytics. It also boasts enhancement of the most tightly integrated optimisation and predictive analytics capabilities available, making it even easier to answer complex questions that cannot be addressed by traditional business intelligence (BI).

RFID is an alternative to the bar code. The advantage of RFID is that it does not require direct contact or line-of-sight scanning. An RFID system consists of three components: an antenna and transceiver (often combined into one reader) and a transponder (the tag). The antenna uses radio frequency waves to transmit a signal that activates the transponder. When activated, the tag transmits data back to the antenna. The data is used to notify a programmable logic controller that an action should occur. The action could be as simple as raising an access gate or as complicated as interfacing with a database to carry out a monetary transaction.

Today's announcement came at SAS Forum International 2004 (http://www.sas.com/sasforuminternational), the most extensive BI conference outside the US. Formerly known as SeUGI (SAS European Users Group International), the name was changed this year to better describe the conference's role as a forum for exchanging ideas, best practices and future directions in business intelligence.