SAS Visual BI ushers in visualisation age

SAS, the leader in business intelligence (BI), kick-started the visualisation age, fundamentally changing the way organisations can transform data into intelligence and wield it as a competitive weapon.

Now shipping, SAS Visual BI software delivers insights into BI that go far beyond the limited graphics available today. Instead of static charts and spreadsheets, organisations using this powerful new SAS software can create interactive 'data movies' by manipulating an easy-to-use, motion-enabled, graphical environment.

Moving from the static to the interactive helps companies explore ideas, investigate patterns and discover previously hidden facts through visual queries.

Designed for business users, SAS Visual BI helps organisations fully leverage the huge volumes of data they collect. This new SAS solution has its roots in SAS's proven BI and analytical technology and its JMP statistical visualisation and discovery software. It empowers organisations to transcend information silos, diverse computing platforms and niche tools for new insights that drive smarter, quicker decisions.

According to visualisation expert, Stephen Few, the founder of Perceptual Edge: "Information visualisation is a powerful approach to business intelligence. When used effectively, visualisation software extends the reach of traditional business intelligence to new realms of understanding - not as one means among many, but often as the only effective means available." [1]

SAS far exceeds other BI visualisation solutions through a wide range of capabilities organically developed and fully integrated into the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform. SAS has been positioned by Gartner in the Leader's Quadrant in the "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 1Q07". [2]

SAS Visual BI further extends these robust visualisation capabilities, which now include:

* Interactive visualisation environments provided throughout the wide spectrum of SAS's business intelligence solutions
* A comprehensive library of graphics for presentations
* Customisable graphic generation

Says Carel Badenhorst, product manager of Business Intelligence at SAS South Africa: "These capabilities are accessible through the SAS BI Dashboard, which displays all content, including key performance indicators, in a role-based, secure, customisable and extensible environment."

Through SAS Visual BI, users may explore a virtually unlimited number of records and columns; formulate queries and manipulate results in a visual format to achieve rapid insight into relationships and patterns; visualise long-term trends instead of limited year-to-date views; and create graphics, incorporating many distinct variables.

SAS Visual BI is a new software solution that merges proven business intelligence and visualisation technologies, including SAS's statistical visualisation and discovery software, JMP.

Duke Medical Centre uses JMP in the children's services business unit to explore data, such as discrepancies in billing and payment, to drive process improvements that yielded a gross revenue increase of 10% to 15%. The hospital is also ramping up to use JMP to help improve its safety programme.

"The volume and complexity of health data interactions really lend themselves to visual depictions that allow us to see the core factors responsible for process inefficiencies," said David T Tanaka, MD, Professor of Paediatrics and Associate Director of Neonatology at Duke University Medical Centre. "Before using this visualisation software, our ability to examine patient care databases was limited to summary tabulations of the data. Now we look at all types of information in a visual format on multiple graphs all linked together on a single screen. We can drill into data, highlight a point and see the related information highlighted on another screen, allowing us to virtually navigate to the real cause of our problem."

By looking at the data in a graphical and interactive way, clinicians at Duke University Medical Centre can even compare the different approaches individual healthcare providers use to address the same kind of medical problem. "In this way, we can sort out which clinical care path leads to consistently superior results, enabling us to send our patients home both sooner and healthier," Tanaka said.

Data visualisation is an integral part of SAS Business Intelligence, which optimally integrates individual technology components within an existing IT infrastructure into a single, unified system for greater information intelligence.

Adds Badenhorst: "SAS delivers broad and deep capabilities for organisations to improve their information management strategy, including technology, data models, methodologies, services and partnerships that enable organisations to reduce the risk, complexity and burdens often associated with managing and effectively using information."

1. Perceptual Edge. "BizViz: The Power of Visual Business Intelligence," by Stephen Few. 7 March 2006.
2. Gartner Research. "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 1Q07," by K Schlegel, B Hostmann and A Bitterer. 26 January 2007.