SAS visualization drives analytic insights to midmarket and beyond

Mintel International selects SAS Visual Data Discovery for interactive, dynamic analytics

Visualization helps organizations quickly see explore and understand patterns in data – speeding time to intelligence. SAS, the leader in business intelligence, is now shipping SAS Visual Data Discovery, an offering especially attractive to midmarket companies. The bundle delivers insights via rich, interactive analytics visualizations that far surpass the limited graphics available elsewhere.

The software frees business executives and analysts, engineers and other researchers from limitations of spreadsheets and static charts, helping extract critical insights from huge volumes of data. Dynamic visualization enables companies such as Mintel International, an industry-leading market research company, to interactively explore ideas and information, investigate patterns and discover previously hidden facts.

SAS Visual Data Discovery, powered by SAS analytics and JMP® software, allows users to grab, spin and slice data, viewing it from multiple dimensions. Interactive graphs include 3-D scatterplots, lattice graphics, needle plots and summary charts. Animated bubble plots put graphs in motion, creating interactive “data movies” for a more engaging and fruitful discovery process.

“The point-and-click interface helps analysts and executives absorb massive amounts of data at a glance, and then visually explore questions to determine the best course of action,” said Mike Gilliland, Product Marketing Manager at SAS. “This means faster, better decisions. And the analytics capabilities behind these visualizations are state of the art. This broad and deep range of advanced analytics is unparalleled for turning complex questions into easily understood answers.”

“SAS Visual Data Discovery will allow Mintel’s business analysts to clarify results before taking action,” said Chris Tinnon, Custom Solutions Architect at Mintel. “We can browse and rearrange data at will, using point and click to visually subset data, animate reports and drill down to underlying data. SAS Visual Data Discovery hit a grand slam with its exploratory data analysis and interactive data visualization.”

Pinnacle Solutions Inc., a SAS Reseller and SAS Silver Alliance Member, helped Mintel select this software. “Mintel, a midsized company that strives for excellence, wanted state-of-the-art visualization that would give clients immediacy and responsiveness to ad-hoc report needs,” said Ken Scales, Vice President of Business Development at Pinnacle Solutions. “SAS delivered that and more, easily overcoming the data limitations found in competing offerings. With SAS Visual Data Discovery, Mintel obtained the advanced analytics they need and an intuitive interface that users love.”
SAS Visual Data Discovery is based on the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, which optimally integrates individual technology components within an existing IT infrastructure into a single, unified system. The resulting information flow transcends organizational silos, diverse computing platforms and niche tools – and delivers new insights that drive value for organizations.