Predictive Analytics from Accenture-SAS

BANGALORE: A first for both companies, Accenture and SAS plan to expand their strategic relationship by jointly developing, implementing and managing next-generation predictive analytics solutions. Predictive analytics takes the information made available through standard analytics today and combines it with more sophisticated statistical modeling, forecasting and optimization techniques to anticipate the impact on business outcomes.

As part of the expansion, the two companies intend to jointly invest in the development of solutions focused on industry-specific predictive analytics applications, starting with the financial services, healthcare and public service sectors; as well as cross-industry solutions in the customer and enterprise management domains. They also plan to begin delivering sophisticated analytical capabilities as a managed service.

As per a press release, in forming the Accenture SAS Analytics Group, the companies intend to bring together Accenture’s extensive industry and functional business knowledge with SAS’s market-leading analytics solutions and capabilities to help companies and government organizations understand and implement predictive analytics solutions. Our enhanced relationship with SAS is a key element of Accenture’s strategy of aggressively addressing the opportunities around the next generation of analytics,” said William D. Green, Accenture’s chairman & CEO.

“Companies that use predictive analytics to derive actionable insights from data and then use those insights to shape decisions, can improve business outcomes and substantially outperform competitors over the long term.”

Jim Goodnight, Chief Executive Officer at SAS, added, “In our long experience providing analytic insights to our customers, we’ve never seen leaders so readily adopting analytic approaches across their organizations.
The Accenture SAS Analytics Group will help these companies take their business results to the next level by applying best-of-breed predictive analytics and best practices to complex questions and decisions. Together,
we will deliver a high performance analytic platform combined with management and industry expertise that is platform-independent, so organizations can leverage their existing IT infrastructure.”

According to Henry Morris, senior vice president for IDC’s Worldwide Software and Services, a leading technology industry research firm: “This move meets a pressing need in the marketplace. What is in very short supply are experts who are familiar with analytic techniques and know how to apply them to industry-specific decisions. The Accenture SAS Analytics Group would bring together the market leader in advanced analytics software with the
industry and applied analytics expertise of a global services firm. This alliance would address the expertise gap by making more industry-specific analytic solutions available with project-based or managed service delivery.
The combination of Accenture and SAS should accelerate adoption of predictive analytics across a broad group of organizations in major centers around the world.”

“During previous downturns, companies that thrived used data insights to produce lasting competitive advantage,” said Dave Rich, managing director, Accenture Analytics “Companies today can use predictive analytics to gain
deeper insight that has not been previously obtainable, allowing decisions to be made more quickly and business performance to be improved.”