SAS-Enterprise BI Deployed by Oxford Global Resources

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Oxford Global Resources has deployed the SAS (News - Alert) Enterprise BI for Midsize Business, officials say to create "a Web-based portal to help field managers proactively track internal performance metrics."

 

SAS, primarily known as a business analytics vendor, partnered with a local reseller to deliver the product to Oxford, which tallies over $200 million in annual sales with fewer than 500 employees.

 

The Web portal to Oxford's data warehouse, with over 125 people regularly accessing it, is so popular that the Windows Server 2003 hardware originally intended for 25 has proved insufficient, Oxford officials say:

 

"We escalated beyond the initial pilot group," says Joseph Cofone, Data Mining Analyst at Oxford. "The biggest measure of success has been that when we asked the original users if we should push availability to more users in our regional offices, the response was 'yes.'"

 

Oxford, based in Beverly, Massachusetts, serves clients from 21 domestic and two European offices. "We review each office's operations quarterly to identify areas of strength and areas in need of improvement. By the time our field managers discovered operational issues that needed to be fixed, three months had passed," says Scott Beyer, Oxford's Vice President of Strategy and Marketing.

 

Oxford's account managers, recruiters and others in the field are able to access performance data at the company, office and even individual level. "Pushing this information from headquarters to the front lines has made our people more accountable and focused on activities that really drive the business," says Beyer.

 

Last month SAS announced the global launch of SAS for Customer Experience Analytics.

 

Debuted in the UK in February 2007, this addition to SAS' comprehensive Customer Intelligence suite is "the result of a global teaming agreement with Speed-Trap," described by SAS officials as "a U.K.-based provider of software that uses Web 2.0 technology to deliver complete on-line customer insight," company officials said at the time.

 

The product captures real-time data from the Web channel and integrates it with data from other channels to provide "multi-channel customer intelligence," according to company officials.

 

"SAS for Customer Experience Analytics has enabled us to know where to focus our attention enabling us to give our customers the best possible service," said Stephen Lonergan, program manager, HSBC Global Transaction Banking.

 

SAS for Customer Experience Analytics was developed using Dynamic Collection technology from Speed-Trap. This data collection system has been built into SAS' existing Enterprise Intelligence Platform.