SAS unveils e-Value solution

e-Value enables organisations to take control of on-line relationships with buyers and suppliers, turning massive volumes of on-line transaction data into the intelligence needed to identify suppliers and service providers who offer them highest value rather than lowest price and to target customers who offer long-term profitability.

SAS Institute, recently announced a new addition to its e-Intelligence product suite, code-named e-Value, that enables organisations to reduce the cost of finding and dealing with new buyers and suppliers on-line and increase the profitability of existing buyer/supplier relationships.

Managing speed, volume and choice

Organisations transacting business on-line are faced with enormous pressure to react effectively to buyer/supplier demand within reduced timeframes. The speed of on-line business means that the repercussions of wrong decisions are far greater than in traditional business-to-business. At the same time, the Internet offers buyers and suppliers far greater choice in trading partners and far greater risk in dealing with unproven parties.

To take control of on-line relationships, buyers and suppliers need relevant facts from massive volumes of on-line data, enabling them to rapidly assess new and existing buyer/supplier performance and to act effectively upon it.

e-Value distils massive volumes of on-line data into the intelligence organisations need to quickly and accurately assess new buyer/supplier risk, and existing supplier/customer performance on-line.

Increasing Profitability

e-Value supports the building of long-term mutually profitable buyer/supplier relationships by providing procurement managers, sales and marketing directors and chief operations officers with intelligence derived from data collected at all points of the buying/supplying process. e-Value allows procurement managers to answer questions such as, "How much money have I spent with this supplier?" "How much of this supplier's revenue do I account for?", "How should I balance my spend to leverage my supplier relationships?", "Should I use a B2B exchange to buy this commodity, given my volume and which one should I use?" and "Through which channels have I secured the best conditions for this commodity?"

e-Value will allow sales and marketing directors to answer questions such as "What value is this customer to me?", "Should I bundle products and how?" "What added services differentiate me from my competitors?" and "How much of my business comes through B2B Exchanges?"

B2B Internet service providers, such as B2B Exchanges that bring buyers and suppliers together in a virtual trading area, will benefit from e-Value in two ways. Firstly, e-Intelligence can be used to form a key part of the service offering, namely market intelligence on who is buying or is interested in buying what from whom at what price, either on a named or an aggregated level. Secondly, B2B Exchanges can use e-Intelligence to better tailor their own product and service offerings to the needs of their customers, in the same way as any other supplier.

e-Value - building on 23 years' of leadership in data warehousing and analysis

e-Value contains a data warehouse infrastructure that includes direct access engines to all B2B internet transaction data and the facility to combine this with external content such as Dun & Bradstreet's product and supplier classification code numbers. Standard Application Programming Interfaces and business specifications are provided for e-Service providers to integrate their service offerings. e-Value provides data mining models tailored to the B2B environment. e-Value allows e-intelligence to be surfaced through corporate portals, thin or full-client applications (SAS or third party) and on wireless devices such as WAP phones. e-Value is fully integrated with SAS Institute's Supplier Relationship Management and Customer Relationship Management solutions and with the SAS e-Intelligence solution for internet-based business-to-consumer relationship management.

Availability and pricing

e-Value will be available from 4Q 2000. Pricing will be disclosed nearer to availability. A Rapid Result^O service, enabling organisations to identify the relevant processes, data sources and third party service level agreements for e- Intelligence, is available now.

The SAS e-intelligence product suite

SAS e-Intelligence solutions enable organisations to build mutually profitable on-line relationships with customers, suppliers and employees. The first SAS e-Intelligence solutions, announced in March 2000 enable organisations to build personalised and therefore profitable on-line relationships with individuals. e-Discovery, the core solution, gives organisations an understanding of individual buying or other transaction history, preferences and value to the organisation. e-Value addresses the very different business process, intelligence and communication requirements of the on-line B2B world.