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While in Cary, I spoke to Jim Davis, CMO and senior vice president of SAS, who says that the economy has forced organizations to apply analytics to help streamline processes. Those same companies are now having serious discussions about the benefits. "What we've seen is that when the economy went south, people pulled back and used analytics to optimize and cut costs--they neglected the customer. We were about customers before the downturn. Now we'll see a resurgence of the customer focus again. In 2011, we'll continue to see customer intelligence apps becoming increasingly important."

Davis' predictions were evident yesterday as some companies shared how they've overcome challenges and how, by doing so, they're evolving their analytics efforts to influence future business decisions.

Scott Zucker, vice president of IT solutions delivery at Family Dollar, said it was challenging at first to fit analytics into the company's operational environment because analytics is spread across every retail function. "It was hard to find an owner and get a champion behind it," he said. The second challenge was developing the metrics and analytics as part of the process. "We did it concurrently. If it's not embedded in the process, it won't be adopted. "It starts with strategy and process."

Gary King, CIO, Chico's, said he's seeing the buyer transition to the online space. The online buyer represents 7 or 8 percent of sales, but spends three times that of what the in-store buyer represents. "The more we can transition to online, the better off we are. This idea that the customer wants to interact in one channel is falling by the wayside."

Because of the shift to online, Chico's is analyzing customer transactions in the store as well as online and merging the results for actionable insight. This past summer, the company rolled out a new sales initiative to all of its stores to service the customer in a more tailored way. This strategy was based on insight gleaned from its analytics efforts.

Peter Kear, vice president of sales and marketing, IS solutions, PLC, said there's a drive in his organization to bring in the vision of the customer and to analyze customers through voice. "We're seeing a real move on the business intelligence side in dealing with the individual. We're leveraging social and transactional data."

Rex Pruitt, manager, MIS profitabilty and risk, Premiere Bankcard, said that customer segments have grown over the past two years. "Even our consumer segments have changed," he said. Regulating the finance industry also had significant impact on revenue opportunities. "We've tightened up risk requirements and now, because of our focus on targeted marketing, and we've seen improvement in delinquency. We are now taking a closer look of the overall portfolio."

Additionally, Pruitt said that Premiere Bankcard is using analytics to parse out good performers from bad performers. "Basically you're creating an odds ratio. We figure out a target treatment and it's a significant outflow.... We're looking more intently on trying to retain customers."

I'll be offering more analytical insight and commentary today as I tweet live from SAS' Premiere Business Leadership Series in Las Vegas. Follow me at twitter/miladantonio