SAS Viya vs. SAS Enterprise Miner

We piloted SAS AA at my organization to see how well it compares with other free software tools such as RStudio and Anaconda. So far what we saw was very impressive especially with the visual display but was a little out of our price range. It would be useful in analyzing population health metrics combined with financial data.

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Text Miner option is very useful to uncover trending themes in very large data sets.

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• SAS is can be used as query builder tool which can automate a lot of excel process.
• There are variety of statistical options available that tie up good visual analytics.
• There are inbuilt models available for different operations which doesn't require any coding and are easy to run.

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• Developing and evaluating ensemble models.
• A very transparent interface.

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• SAS Analytics does not have very good graphic capabilities. Their advanced graphics packages are expensive, and still not very appealing or intuitive to customize.
• SAS Analytics is not as up-to-date when it comes to advanced analytical techniques as R or other open-source analytics packages.

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• One of the major flaws is that the tool is basically an interface to SAS/STAT code. It generates code in the background and runs it. Because of that, some errors are warning might be a little difficult to understand for users who aren't proficient with SAS code.
• R integration is nice but I would like to see the possibility to integrate even more statistical models different than SAS. That would allow for better performance optimization when really required.
• The light client is java based and a little heavy on the OS. It would be nice to get a web-based version of the tool instead of the java one.

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Not only does SAS become easier to use as the user gets more familiar with its capabilities, but the customer service is excellent. Any issues with SAS and their technical team is either contacting the user via email, chat, text, WebEx, or phone. They have power users that have years of experience with SAS there to help with any issue.

If SAS Enterprise Guide is utilized any beginning user will be able to shorten the learning curve. This is allow the user a plethora of basic capabilities until they can utilize coding to expand their needs in manipulating and presenting data. SAS is also dedicated to expanding this environment so it is ever growing.

SAS probably has the most market saturation out of all of the analytics software worldwide. They are in every industry and they are knowledgable about every industry. They are always available to take questions, solve issues, and discuss a company's needs. A company that buys SAS software has a dedicated representative that is there for all of their needs.

Although nothing is perfect, SAS is almost there. The software can handle billions of rows of data without a glitch and runs at a quick pace regardless of what the user wants to perform. SAS products are made to handle data so performance is of their utmost important. The software is created to run things as efficiently as SAS software can to maximize performance.

SAS is generally known for good support that's one of the main reasons to justify the cost of having SAS licenses within our organization is knowing that customer support is just a quick phone call away. I've usually had good experiences with the SAS customer support team it's one of the ways in which the company stands out in my view.

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I have contacted SAS twice in the past year and they have been super responsive both times. They solved my problem. I am also registered for an in-person class next month and they called today to tell me that it will be an online-only session. They apologized for the change and registered me for the online version. Super helpful!

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SAS has regional and national conferences that are dedicated to expanding users' knowledge of the software and showing them what changes and additions they are making to the software. There are user groups in most of the major cities that also provide multi-day seminars that focus on specific topics for education. If online training isn't the best way for the user, there is ample in-person training available.

There are online videos, live classes, and resource material which makes training very easy to access. However, nothing is circumstantial so applying your training can get tricky if the user is performing complex tasks. When purchasing software, SAS will also allocate education credits so the user(s) can access classes and material online to help expand their knowledge.

Ask as many questions you can before the install to understand the process. Since a third party does the installation your company is sort of a passanger and it is easy to get lost in the process. It also helps to have all users and IT support involved in the install to help increase the knowledge as to how SAS runs and what it needs to perform correctly.

SAS is faster then both SPSS and STATA. SAS also has better models and graphs when comparing the three softwares. However, STATA and SPSS are more user friendly. It is easy to use SPSS and STATA, because a lot of it is point-click. SAS requires some training to be able to use it as effectively as possible. SAS is better with large data sets, and it is easier to analyze many data points at the same time

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For those that are used to the SAS ecosystem, SAS Enterprise Miner is a massive move in the right direction. It makes doing analytics much more enjoyable. It is more user-friendly than Spotfire or Kinesis and seems to produce better results overall. SAS Enterprise Miner seems to be written by analysts for analysts.

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It all depends on the type of SAS product the user has. Scaleability differs from product to product, and if the user has SAS Office Analytics the scaleability is quite robust. This software will satisfy the majority of the company's analytic needs for years to come. In addition, if SAS is not meeting the users needs the company can easily find SAS solutions that will.

• SAS is pretty expensive, so a company would need to take that into consideration before purchasing a license.
• A lot of companies are now starting to use SAS Advance Analytics, it is great for sharing data between departments.
• Presentations come out better when using SAS, and estimates are more precise to the confidence interval.

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• It has a positive ROI to our business, as our sales lead rate increased after we started recommending SAS EM.
• Our business operation numbers improved after we introduced SAS EM and started using predictive analytics for our customer retention and customer chain prediction.
• The statistical modelling for the risk controls in our financial department helped to reduce the related residual risk.

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