Accenture and SAS Enhance Partnership to Expand Business Intelligence Services

By Susan J. Campbell

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

A partnership has been announced between Accenture and SAS (News - Alert) that stands to provide benefit to both companies. Accenture plans to expand its business intelligence services through increased collaboration with SAS, while the provider of business intelligence (BI) software and services will enhance SAS-based software and product development by leveraging Accenture’s industry expertise.

 

The relationship is expected to help Accenture to deliver proven, repeatable solutions while also creating additional specialized capabilities to meet the increased demand for business intelligence services currently provided to clients through its Accenture Information Management Services (AIMS) organization.

 

SAS anticipates that the relationship will help to accelerate growth of the company’s global BI software revenue by leveraging Accenture’s investment in sales, marketing, training, research and development, and expertise in industry and business processes.

"We are clearly seeing an increased demand for business intelligence services as organizations seek higher performance by collecting and analyzing internal and external data," said Royce Bell, Chief Executive Officer of Accenture Information Management Services, in a Monday statement. "By striking a closer relationship with a market-leading enterprise business intelligence software vendor, we will be able to provide our clients with even more skills and scale than previously possible."

According to Jim Davis, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of SAS, business intelligence solutions and services are the next big growth area in information technology. By leveraging the mutual strengths of these two companies in the areas of software, services and business expertise, both will be better able to take advantage of global strategic BI opportunities.

Davis went on to add that the breadth of SAS’ enterprise intelligence platform and industry focused solutions coupled with Accenture’s ability to provide additional customization, implementation services and global reach, customers will be able to address key business and technology pains associated with information management more quickly and effectively.

This expanded partnership builds on ten years of Accenture and SAS working together to provide business intelligence solutions in the analytics area where companies are seeking to gain more insight and value from their data. The companies expect that this expanded relationship will help provide a foundation for Accenture and SAS to further develop, market, sell and deliver global industry solutions for business through a comprehensive and united approach and set of resources.

The coming together of two powerhouse players such as Accenture and SAS will not only certainly benefit both of these companies, but also every customer that each of these companies serve. To combine the proven expertise can only provide added-value to all end-user solutions, while also strengthening market position for both.

More and companies are recognizing the importance of business intelligence and how it can help to provide the enterprise with the leverage that it needs to gain a competitive advantage. The challenge is that many of these companies are ill-equipped to even begin gathering the correct data or how to leverage it to achieve strategic goals. Accenture and SAS can fill that void, helping companies to not only gather information, but to use it to their advantage.


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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.