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SAS 9 Technology Expands APEX Analytics Integrated BI

APEX Management Group ("APEX"), a division of Gallagher Benefit Services Inc, is using SAS software to support an accelerated business plan and provide its clients dramatically-improved benefits. APEX's implementation of the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform, with its fully-integrated business intelligence (BI) technology, is allowing the company to expand and offer advanced data mining consulting services for its clients in the employee benefits and insurance industries. SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, is the leader in business intelligence.

The SAS 9 Intelligence Platform integrates data access, query and reporting, storage and advanced analytic capabilities to deliver consistent, enterprisewide intelligence. This platform goes beyond BI to provide reliable, easy-touse, end-to-end business intelligence not possible with the limited, traditional BI tools offered by most vendors.

"When we began to offer these services to our clients, APEX chose the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform because we knew that connecting people with vital information through powerful analytic tools would enable our clients to make faster, more-informed decisions and take timelier actions," said Jody Porrazzo, director of econometric risk strategy at APEX. "SAS has created a foundation where we can do everything from exploration to data mining and text mining to forecasting on very large data sets. This is mission-critical to APEX."

Porrazzo, a long-time SAS user, said APEX selected several products from the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform product line, including the SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence Server, which empowers APEX users with access to necessary information in whatever format they desire and provides appropriate, customized interfaces for various skill levels. The Enterprise Business Intelligence Server also lowers the total cost of ownership by consolidating BI systems and platforms across the company.

APEX, which specializes in actuarial, underwriting, and data mining services, is known for its research and development of advanced techniques in data mining and actuarial analysis. In order to move forward they felt they needed a more efficient method to analyze data to identify at-risk patients. With SAS technology, APEX is ready to realize a growth spurt that its executives believe will lead to a significant return on investment (ROI), according to Dr. Porrazzo.

These data-quality improvements, made possible through advanced analytical capabilities built into SAS 9, will help better identify at-risk patients, an issue within many disease-management and insurance service programs. Predictive modeling capabilities can be used, for example, to accurately identify and stratify high-risk patients and populations with chronic conditions for appropriate interventions, which can improve clinical outcomes, help with realignment of resources, and lower the overall cost of care.

APEX also uses SAS to build and manage enterprise warehouses and data marts, provide customized BI strategies to its clients and continuously collect data from new sourcing populations to build its own intelligence.

"We're very happy with the SAS 9 offerings, and our initial Exploration Warehouse and Data Marts are already thriving," said Porrazzo. "Having an integrated, extensible BI platform that incorporates our existing hardware and integrates our scattered data sources provides us with accurate, in-depth intelligence that is already taking us to a higher level of business success."