SAS Acquires Technology to Track Customer Behavior in Real-Time; Verbind Technology to Augment SAS Interaction Management and Other Solutions

CARY, N.C., Nov. 18, 2002 -- SAS, the leader in business intelligence, has acquired certain technology assets of Verbind, a leader in real-time behavioral tracking and event-triggering technology.

SAS is integrating the technology into SAS(R) Interaction Management to enable organizations to determine - in real time - which changes in customer behavior are significant and to identify, across multiple channels, when those changes will occur.

SAS Interaction Management enables companies to respond to changing customer behaviors in a timely fashion and deliver relevant messages to individual customers via the most effective channel or channels. This capability lets organizations take advantage of up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, for example, or prevent customer attrition.

SAS already provides time- and transaction-based event triggers as standard features in its SAS Marketing Automation solution. These triggers work with any combination of databases, a key differentiator over proprietary single-database triggering products. With the new extension of its interaction management solution, SAS broadens this capability by providing individualized behavior-based tracking over time, generating even more relevant insight for more successful customer interactions.

"With the extension of our interaction management solution, SAS is taking analytical CRM to a new level of sophistication," said Dr. Jim Goodnight, SAS president and CEO. "Not only are we delivering the world-class customer intelligence that has been SAS' hallmark for more than a quarter-century, but we are also providing a robust framework for organizations to leverage this intelligence in real-time to drive effective decision-making throughout the enterprise."

"SAS Interaction Management applies real-time analysis to all inbound and outbound customer interactions, enabling organizations to manage real-time, multi-channel dialogues with customers," said Jim Davis, SAS' senior vice president and chief marketing officer. "This is a great benefit to companies that have invested significant resources in operational CRM and front-office systems, but still need real-time intelligence to personalize individual customer experiences. We are committed to improving customers' return, and the acquisition of the Verbind technology supports this goal."

SAS Interaction Management coordinates a variety of personalization techniques, including this new behavior-based tracking, to apply real-time analysis to every communication between an organization and its customers, enabling more effective multi-channel customer dialogues. This solution enables companies to go beyond using the typical "one-size-fits-all" business rule that is prevalent today. With SAS Interaction Management, companies can now evaluate every customer situation in its own unique context instead of missing an opportunity by applying the same rule to thousands of different customers.

SAS' acquisition of these assets from Verbind follows a successful partnership between the two companies.

"Event-driven outbound communications resonate with marketers because they relate to a lifetime event, a series of events or an external event that has affected the customer. There is a need to integrate this detection with analysis and business logic to understand the customer situation and recommend the appropriate response," said Gareth Herschel, senior research analyst at Gartner. "However, for the message to be relevant, there may only be a small window of opportunity that must be seized. The integration of behavior tracking technology, with analytic and campaign management solutions should enable the swiftest reaction between the customer event and the enterprise's response."

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 39,000 sites - including 98 of the top 100 businesses on the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For more than 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

--30--mh/ch*