Seamless integration is critical to business intelligence (BI) delivery, making it wise to implement an end-to-end BI platform and solutions from one provider.
Benefits include significantly lower total cost of ownership, none of the costs associated with interfacing dissimilar products, data risk minimisation and quick development turnaround time.
"It makes greater sense to use a leading vendor's BI solutions throughout, than to choose best-of-breed products in different areas and face integration issues," says Simon Marland, CIO at Nedbank Retail.
"There are massive costs associated with running different BI product sets," he continues. "These include integrating various product sets, training and upskilling staff, as well as the costs of the processing time and power needed for developing interfaces.
"In addition, some people are simply unable to learn four or five different products, with a consequent requirement to increase staff."
For the past three years, Nedbank has used SAS solutions for its entire foundation platform, from data warehouse to GUI, as well as its higher-end BI applications, including balanced scorecard, financial management and Web-based BI delivery systems.
"While SAS may not necessarily have the best product in every single area (its product may be second best in some) it supplies a total solution. And we do believe that SAS provides the leading product at the BI value extraction level; that is, the data mining stage. This is where we use attrition and propensity models, integrating internal and external data, to provide valuable predictive analytics," says Marland.
A totally integrated BI platform means that the bank's different BI activities are not 'siloed', but form part of the entire BI value chain.
"Our attrition models, for example, are not simply models, but pieces of the total chain," explains Marland. "A standalone product at this level is no good, even if it is best of breed.
"A best of breed warehouse, for example, can produce no real value if the data mart, GUI or balanced scorecard solution are not seamlessly integrated with it."
SAS integration ensures that when Nedbank builds a model, it interconnects and is integrated with all other models as well as all data.
"It also means a very short turnaround time of two to three months for development," says Marland.
"While another organisation may be able to build an excellent attrition model, if it is not seamlessly integrated due to the homogeneity of the platform, that model will have to be re-worked and integrated to other systems, a process that can take up to a year."
Nedbank views SAS not as a vendor, but as a partner, according to Marland, and the benefits of working with the leaders in business intelligence are many.
"Many SAS tools can be sweated in other areas," he says. "For example, SAS Financial Management System (FMS) has a massive planning piece that could be used for capacity planning as well as financial planning."
The company's sheer size and global reach is another advantage. "If we strike a problem that cannot be solved locally, we are able to tap into the company's global resources and expertise," concludes Marland.
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