SAS recently held its annual SAS Innovate conference in Sydney, bringing together IT and business leaders, as well as data experts to share and discuss trends.
As the largest privately held software company in the world, SAS was founded almost 50 years ago and today represents an authentic leader in advanced analytics, AI and generative AI.
Retailbiz spoke to SAS chief marketing officer, Jenn Chase to discuss AI and Gen AI in marketing. SAS has more than 1,400 retail and CPG customers and two-thirds of the Fortune 500 CPG companies are using SAS, with retail being one of the company’s major industry verticals.
“When it comes to AI, we’re looking at how we can implement and incorporate AI into the solutions our partners already have,” Chase said.
“For example, we’re working with marketing departments in retail so they can better understand their customers, capture their data and create customer journeys by activating various channels. We’re also embedding Gen AI capabilities within our Customer Intelligence 360 product.”
AI use cases
One key use case of AI is content generation, which is where many marketers are starting and looking at ways to improve productivity.
“SAS is committed to responsible innovation, so we create content from our own knowledge base, not by using public LLMs. The content is based on our owned content that we know is accurate, compelling and differentiated,” Chase said.
“We have a great partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and work with their Bedrock capabilities to provide marketers with a tool to create assets off of a long-form asset or create clever and catchy email subject lines from their owned content.”
Another use case is further democratising AI and other technology across marketing departments. Often when it comes to designing models or creating segments, there’s a small subset with the capabilities to make that happen.
“One of the most basic questions marketers start with is tell me more about my audience or for a retailer, what does my consumer base look like for a particular product in a particular region? Now anyone in the marketing department with a prompt-based interaction within our software can ask questions and better understand their audience. This empowers marketers to not only better understand their customers but better act on their data,” Chase said.
“SAS uses its own software – SAS Viya and SAS Customer Intelligence 360 – and we act as customer zero for our research and development team. We work closely to provide ideas of how we think marketers want to be able to explore Gen AI and we respond to their ideas. We want to ensure our software is built and designed by marketers, for marketers.”
SAS Customer Intelligence 360: Multi-channel customer journey targeting and personalisation.
Impact on business
New global research from SAS sees Australia rank fourth globally in Gen AI usage and maturity, only behind China, the US and the UK. Chase says the benefits of AI are being delivered across three dimensions – enhancing productivity, improving time to market for bottom line savings and an improved customer experience as a key competitive differentiator.
“One of the survey insights I found fascinating was the breakdown of departments adopting AI, with sales and marketing ranked number one and two. Sales organisations are leveraging AI to better enable themselves and have more effective conversations with customers,” she said.
“Australia is punching above its weight when it comes to AI usage. However, looking at the implementation, it’s lower than some of our global counterparts, which presents a significant opportunity for further exploration and moving into production.
“The benefits of AI that Australian businesses are seeing were well above the global average, from improved employee experience and satisfaction to savings on operational costs. When the findings were broken down by daily Gen AI usage by industry, telecommunications and retail ranked first and second, which wasn’t surprising given they’re both consumer-based industries.
“But what we did learn from the study is the barriers or concerns when implementing AI being customer data and privacy. Retailers are extremely conscientious about customer data and privacy, so it makes sense that they’re exploring AI but wanting to ensure it’s measured and responsible.
“Retailers are sophisticated in their data management strategies. It’s difficult to achieve great AI outcomes without a great strategy, so I believe the retail industry is well positioned to accelerate its AI adoption. Retailers that focus on and build out their zero- and first-party data will be winners in AI.”
Responsible use of data
In order to use AI responsibly, organisations must have a philosophy to build their approach to AI and understand their technology strategy, according to Chase.
“When adopting AI responsibly, one of the first steps that any organisations must take is to establish corporate guidelines for exploring AI and Gen AI. At SAS, responsible innovation is so important, and we published responsible AI guidelines for all employees,” she said.
There are four dimensions to SAS’ AI guidelines:
- All use of AI has to be human centred and there must be a human in the loop. While SAS wants to enjoy the benefits of automation, the company wants to recognise the fact that a human must be part of the important decisions AI is making.
- If content is created using Gen AI, SAS must be transparent and disclose that with customers.
- SAS must protect customer data and customer privacy.
- SAS must protect its Intellectual Property (IP).
“If we have these guidelines in a space that’s changing so rapidly, that’s our moral compass when it comes to AI adoption. While the technology evolves quickly, we want to operate with these guidelines in mind,” Chase said.
“When it comes to the technology side of AI, and data in particular, we’re talking to our customers about their Customer Data Platform (CDP) strategy. Getting customer data will always be a challenge because there’s always new sources for where data can come in, new places where the data will live and new regulations that are enforced.
“Making sure organisations have a robust CDP that’s ingesting customer data and doing the right identity resolution to understand the customer no matter which channel they’re engaging with and then doing the modelling and predictive scoring to act on the data, is critical.”
Retail case study: Ulta Beauty
The largest US beauty retailer, Ulta Beauty uses SAS Customer Intelligence 360 to create world-class customer experiences online and in stores. Ulta Beauty has more than 38 million loyalty members, 1,300-plus stores across the US and seven million Instagram followers.
“SAS has been working with Ulta Beauty for nearly a decade and through the pandemic, our partnership was further strengthened because the customers they knew so intimately walking into their stores were no longer able to visit them. They had a need to understand their customers across different channels such as their website and mobile app and create personalised communications at scale,” Chase said.
“Ulta Beauty wanted to understand how changing trends in the beauty category impacted purchase behaviour and act on it immediately. They use SAS Customer Intelligence 360 for personalisation at scale.
“One of the benefits they’ve seen is 95% of their sales are coming from their 38 million loyalty members, which reflects the strength of their zero- and first-party data. They know their customers and apply it in a way that’s meaningful to create intimate customer relationships.”
In summary
Chase recognises that the idea of getting started on an AI project can be overwhelming. Her advice to customers is to adopt guidelines first and foremost, identify the desired benefit and ensure data is in order to achieve strong AI outcomes.
“From there, make AI your yellow brick road – follow it, achieve quick wins, demonstrate success and learn from your failures,” she said.
“AI isn’t coming for our jobs but marketing professionals with AI skills will. The initial introduction of Gen AI can be frightening but early on in the process of Gen AI within SAS, my message to the team was that AI isn’t coming for your job but a marketer that understands how to apply it could. There’s a choice – to embrace this new once-in-a-generation technology and pave the way in how it can be applied.
“The reality is that AI will make us more productive. A recent IDC study found that Gen AI could take over and automate 30% of traditional marketing mundane tasks by 2027, allowing marketers to focus more on creativity and customer experience and in turn, this will elevate the position of marketing.”
Feature image photo credit: Orlando Sydney Corporate Photography.