So, you are considering SAS.
You’ll be wondering if it's a good choice for you, if its feature set compares well to other options on the market, and if it is priced affordably enough for what you get.
This article will break all that down for you and more.
Plus, at the end of the article you’ll find links to alternatives to SAS as well as our top picks for the options in this category.
Or, just go straight to Our top picks for Best analytics tools
Without further ado, let’s get started.
SAS Features
SAS drives confident decisions, maximum value and faster outcomes. With its fully integrated, open-source, cloud-native technology platform, you can predict how to pivot seamlessly and amplify your progress. Moreover, SAS is familiar with practically every business industry and delivers tailored products for each sector.
Here are some exclusive features of SAS:
Advanced analytics: SAS offers data mining within its platform to help you simplify preparation and interact intuitively using dynamic charts. SAS uses composite AI to help you push the boundaries of innovation and solve problems. With SAS, you can easily predict future trends based on your data sets.
Analytics and BI: SAS' intuitive self-service analytics helps you explore data across the organization and deliver insights at the decision point. You can use self-service data modelling to set KPIs and hierarchies while automating data. Additionally, SAS offers interactive visualizations to discover insights and inspire audiences.
Composable Analytics: SAS allows you to tailor analytics and planning applications to meet unique business requirements. You can increase application developer productivity with reusable widgets and flexible APIs. SAS enables users to easily customize and compose analytics applications.
Prebuilt Business Content: SAS offers prebuilt best-practice content packages for businesses to quickly help them get started with data analytics. You can leverage end-to-end tailored packages to work with recommended SAS data sources. Additionally, it helps you realize results quickly by accessing documentation of KPIs.
Data Management: SAS' data management technology empowers every process within your organization. It's a crucial part of the SAS platform. SAS helps in transforming analytics programs into big opportunities by deriving insights constantly and unleashing the full potential of your data.
Decisioning: Effective decisioning is crucial for every business to scale swiftly. However, most business decisions are data-driven. SAS prepares your data, so every received insight is actually valuable. It helps you make transparent and explainable decisions to build long-term trust. With SAS Reality-tested AI, you can simulate different scenarios.
Risk Management: SAS recently acquired Kamakura Corporation, a leading risk management software provider for the banking sector. SAS has proven methodologies to help you establish a risk-aware culture, optimize capital and liquidity, and meet regulatory demands.
Marketing: SAS reimagines your marketing campaigns with its trusted analytics and powerful decisioning. Adaptive planning, journey activation and a real-time decision engine allow you to create appealing, moments-based customer experiences that boost profitability and brand loyalty.
SAS Pricing
SAS is available for free on the Azure marketplace. However, you have to incur infrastructure costs.
SAS Discounts and Coupons
SAS currently does not offer any discounts or coupons for its analytical tool.
SAS Free Trial
SAS offers a 14 Day free trial for its business intelligence and data analytics platform.
SAS, A short how-to guide
This guide is designed to give you an overview of how SAS works and how to use it effectively. After completing this guide, you will be able to:
• Download and install SAS
• Launch SAS and open a workflow
• Configure nodes in a workflow
• Execute a workflow
• Export and share a workflow
Installing SAS
Before you can use SAS, you need to download and install it on your computer. SAS is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
To download SAS, go to the SAS website and click the Download button.
On the next page, select the edition of SAS that you want to install. For this tutorial, we will be using the Community Edition.
Click the Download button and select the installer for your operating system. Once the download is complete, launch the installer and follow the prompts to install SAS.
Once you have SAS installed, launch the application and you should see the "Welcome to SAS" dialog.
From the "Welcome to SAS" dialog, you can either choose to open an existing workflow or create a new workflow. For this tutorial, we will be creating a new workflow.
Creating and exporting a new workflow
To create a new workflow, click on the "Create new workflow" button.
This will take you to the workflow editor, which is where you will be spending most of your time in SAS. The workflow editor is where you will be adding nodes and connecting them together to create your data analysis workflow.
Click on a data set to start analyzing it. You can right-click on a set and select combine to superimpose it with another relevant data set. You can save intermediate results by simply exporting the report while analyzing.
Once you login to your SAS account, you'll enter the "Home" section. Here, you can see an overview of your recent analysis. Click on a dataset to start analyzing it.
Once done, you'll enter the preparation stage. Here, SAS prepares your data for analysis by removing faulty entries or leads. Next, you can begin modelling the workflow for your data set.
Once done, you can start gaining valuable insights from your data sets. You can combine distinct sets or break down a data set into multiple sheets for thorough analysis.
