Merkle, an independent customer relationship marketing (CRM) agency, has selected SAS Analytics software to power its marketing, technical, analytical and creative disciplines.

SAS (News - Alert), a major player in business analytics, enables Merkle and its clients to understand consumer needs and assess how each media channel reinforces brands – capabilities critical to loyalty and retention.

 “SAS enables us to maximize our clients’ customer portfolios,” said David Geisinger, vice president of the enterprise technology group at Merkle, in a statement.

Geisinger said that SAS Analytics is the best all-purpose marketing analytics software.

“Our employees call SAS a workhorse that handles even the toughest challenges. Less powerful software quickly collapsed under Merkle’s heavy data volumes and configuration requirements. SAS keeps going and going – helping us continually innovate, using advanced analytics to improve client marketing results,” he said.

“One of today’s biggest macro-level trends is exponential data growth,” said Ozgur Dogan, vice president of analytics at Merkle.

Dogan said that SAS helps the company determine which data sources clients should select for optimized CRM programs.

He said that a breakthrough in the industry, Merkle’s Data Source (News - Alert) application uses SAS to balance cost and effectiveness measures to produce optimal ROI for data spending. This, Dogansaid, has proven highly effective in lowering client costs while maintaining high response rates.

“As news about our client successes spread, more companies call us. Using SAS Analytics, we’re fully equipped to expand our array of such custom solutions,” he said.

TMCnet recently reported that KMWorld has listed business analytics specialist SAS among “100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management.”

The magazine has lauded SAS for its text analytics that allow organizations to derive maximum value from large quantities of text by leveraging content assets across departmental repositories and easing reuse regardless of who owns the content or where it was generated.

KMWorld cites several examples where SAS has benefitted its users: Oberweis Dairy is using SAS Text Analytics to enjoy improved marketing campaign results, sales growth and early alerts to manufacturing issues.

SAS has allowed it to analyze structured and unstructured data together and it delivers the knowledge required for better decision making.

Another satisfied customer is Karolinska Hospital in Sweden, which leverages SAS Text Analytics for improving patient safety. The medical facility is using a key text analytics product, SAS Text Miner, which automatically sifts through massive stores of patient health records to determine which events led to patient injuries.