With more than 7 million customers, ING-DiBa turned to the leader in business analytics software and services to address increasing analytics demand. The SAS platform supports ING-DiBa's current-day management reporting, plus reports and ad-hoc analysis for marketing and sales, compliance, customer interactions, service center and more.

ING-DiBa's new SAS infrastructure performs more detailed analysis in less time and with greater efficiency. Quickly pulling customer, account, application and process data into a warehouse, SAS enables management and technical departments to make decisions using previously undetected relationships and connections.

The bank wanted increased analytical depth and speed in a solution that would be easy enough for business users. To achieve these goals, it upgraded to SAS 9.2 and added SAS Enterprise BI Server, SAS Enterprise Guide ® and SAS Enterprise Miner™. The smooth conversion was expedited by SAS Alliance member Decadis.

"SAS is the analytical heart of ING-DiBa," said Gisela Hehn, MIS/Data Warehouse Division Manager. "With our expanded SAS solution, we have doubled the process speed, while achieving greater analytical depth, both of which are of great strategic importance to us."

By expanding its SAS environment, ING-DiBa can perform tasks more quickly, accurately and easily. Ensuring the smooth flow of analytical processes has been critical, since Hehns' division runs 600 programs or analyses simultaneously, many feeding daily reports.

ING-DiBa's Product and Target Group Management department acts as a hub for data analysis. Its MIS/Data Warehouse division draws conclusions which are used by departments throughout the organization. The group provides daily management reporting for more than 300 individuals, as well as regular reports, ad hoc analyses and data for several departments.

"We need the best possible analytics for these complex processes. For us, that solution is clearly SAS," said Hehn. "Before, our daily data runs took four hours. Now, it takes only half the time - and it's done in a single run, which reduces the complexity considerably."

Among the bank's main analytics projects is selecting customers and potential customers to receive marketing campaign offer mailings. "ING-DiBa sends out more than 40 million mailings a year," said Eike Bärmann, Division Manager of Target Group Selection at ING-DiBa. "It is extremely important to select the right customers for a specific offer."

Today, Hehn and her colleagues can perform customer data analyses and target customer for mailings faster and more precisely than ever. Customer responses flow back into the system, creating an efficient learning cycle for marketing.

"By delivering data we can use to realize the best possible response rate, SAS helps us achieve maximum customer feedback with minimal resources," said Bärmann.