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Tried and true, but hard to justify the cost
November 11, 2014

Tried and true, but hard to justify the cost

Bethany Klebanov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

9.1

Modules Used

  • Base
  • Stat

Overall Satisfaction with SAS Analytics

My team used SAS to integrate data from across our organization into an End Customer marketing and sales database for use in reporting and analysis.
  • Data transformations
  • Processing large datasets
  • No big complaints, pretty robust functionality
  • Increased understanding of how customers purchase
  • Ability to understand new product adoption
  • Ability to look at partner performance by factors other than top line revenue
SAS was the incumbent tool, and what the team knew. We did look into using Revolution Analytics enterprise version of R, but the learning curve on that caused us to stick with SAS. In my current position, I've opted for WPS over SAS. I can still leverage my SAS experience, but the price is about 15% of what SAS charges, with extra functionality, such as direct database access. I can supplement WPS with free software, such R for anything that it might be missing.
More cost effective options out there - WPS, Revolution Analytics (R), etc.
While SAS is great at what it does, the price is too high. The high cost issue is even worse if you want to do anything outside of the basic package. It's extra to link directly into databases, it's extra to get the module that allows you to do time series, etc. We were even charged a huge fee because we had one resource who lived in Canada. He was accessing the same US based server as everyone else on the team, the charge was solely because he was outside the US. Given the other options that are out there, it's increasingly difficult to justify such a high price point and antiquated pricing model.