HONG KONG, PRC, Aug. 16, 2006 -- SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today introduces its Retail Intelligence Solution (RIS) and Manufacturing Intelligence Solution which are built on the integrated, open and extensible SAS(R) Enterprise Intelligence Platform, to the Hong Kong market. The combination of these new solutions and HP Integrity servers offers unmatched capabilities for organizations in retail, distribution and manufacturing in Hong Kong to turn vast amounts of data into insightful information to address today's unique business challenges.

"The SAS Retail Intelligence and Manufacturing Intelligence Solutions offer a winning combination of SAS technology and the domain expertise which we gained from our proven successful user cases worldwide, to solve business pains in these industries by delivering accurate, in-depth analytics and intelligence," said Edvan Chan, General Manager, SAS Hong Kong and South China.

"For more than 20 years, HP and SAS have worked together to help customers gain insights into all aspects of their businesses. HP Integrity servers offer unparalleled flexibility and simplified management so that customers have high-availability, scalability, and attractive cost-of-ownership for their award-winning SAS solutions," said Kris Chan, Director, Commercial Accounts and Alliances, Technology Solutions Group, HP Hong Kong.

SAS(R) Retail Intelligence Solution (RIS) can be tailored to meet retailers' specific needs in key areas:

-- analyzing customer behaviour, transactions and store performances with pre-built analytical models;

-- optimizing marketing ROI and delivering more effective promotion campaigns given limited budgets, channel capacities and other constraints

-- calculating base sales volume and demand lift with best-in-class demand forecasting and demand modelling tools, to achieve better in- stock positions; and

-- measuring and managing optimal sourcing strategies that achieve corporate objectives while effectively managing supply risks and reducing costs.

SAS(R) Manufacturing Intelligence Solution (MIS) and can help manufacturers through:

-- improving production quality within the entire organization, from designing experiments and assessing product reliability to monitoring process stability and determining process capability;

-- identifying items that have reached reorder thresholds and then generating recommended order quantities for each item based on cost and service-level targets through spares management;

-- characterizing the past and making statistical inferences about the future in order to predict and prevent critical warranty issues; and

-- identifying questionable warranty claims through advanced analytics, so fraud can be detected before a claim is paid.

SOURCE SAS Institute

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