SAS Visual Analytics Overview
SAS Visual Analytics is a comprehensive and powerful analytics platform designed to help organizations of all sizes uncover valuable insights from their data, facilitate data-driven decision-making, and enhance business performance.
What SAS Visual Analytics Does
SAS Visual Analytics is a single, self-service application that integrates reporting, data exploration, and advanced analytics. It enables users to visually explore data, create and share interactive reports and dashboards, and derive actionable insights from various data sources. This platform is designed for users of all skill levels, from business analysts and decision-makers to statisticians and data scientists, allowing them to discover and share powerful insights that inspire action.
Key Features and Functionality
Data Integration and Real-Time Insights
SAS Visual Analytics can connect with various data sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and big data platforms like Hadoop, enabling real-time data analysis and up-to-the-minute insights.
Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning
The platform goes beyond basic analytics by providing tools for predictive modeling, machine learning, and statistical analysis. These capabilities help in forecasting trends, predicting customer behavior, and assessing risks with greater precision.
Data Visualization and Dashboards
SAS Visual Analytics offers rich data visualization options, including bar charts, scatter plots, heat maps, geographic maps, and more. Users can combine these visualizations into interactive dashboards that provide a comprehensive view of key performance indicators (KPIs). Features like autocharting help determine the best-suited chart for the data, and users can dynamically filter and group data items.
Augmented Analytics
The platform includes augmented analytics capabilities that use machine learning and natural language explanations to identify relationships, outliers, clusters, and other vital insights. It automatically highlights key relationships and provides explanations for the analytical techniques used, making it easier for users to understand the data.
Location Analytics
SAS Visual Analytics integrates with mapping technologies, such as Esri, to add geographical context to analyses. This allows users to analyze data in a geographical context, understanding travel times, distances, and demographics, which is crucial for location-specific decision-making.
Interactive Reporting and Collaboration
Users can create stunning interactive reports and dashboards that can be shared via the web and mobile devices. Report consumers can change calculation parameters, display rules, and chart types on the fly, enabling instant critical business decisions. The platform also supports collaborative work, allowing multiple users to interact with and modify reports in real-time.
Mobile Access
SAS Visual Analytics provides native mobile apps for iOS and Android, enabling users to access and interact with reports and dashboards on tablets and smartphones. This ensures that key decision-makers can stay informed and make decisions even when they are not in the office.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The platform includes NLP capabilities, allowing users to interact with data using natural language. This feature makes querying data more intuitive, enabling users to ask questions like “What are the sales trends for Q3?” and receive relevant visualizations in response.
Embedded Insights and Custom Visualizations
Users can embed individual visual insights or entire interactive reports into custom web applications. The platform also supports the integration of third-party JavaScript libraries like D3 and C3, allowing for custom and interactive visualizations.
Scalability and Governance
SAS Visual Analytics operates in a powerful in-memory environment, ensuring scalability and governance. It supports enterprise-wide deployment and provides robust report design, creation, and viewing capabilities, including parameterized calculations and dynamic filtering.
In summary, SAS Visual Analytics is a powerful tool that combines advanced analytics, data visualization, and interactive reporting to help organizations uncover deep insights from their data. Its user-friendly interface, real-time capabilities, and collaborative features make it an essential tool for data-driven decision-making across various industries.