Competitive Analysis

   SAS system is one of the software that is used for business intelligence, data warehousing, data mining for management and analysis of the data from the company. There are different competitors of SAS and the major competitors are: ORACLE, SAP, and SPSS.

         Oracle is second with $3.117B in sales in 2013, down .2% from 2012’s sales of $3.124B .SAP retained their market leadership position in 2013, selling $6.1B in ERP software up from $6B in 2012(Columbus, 2014).

A. Oracle:

Oracle is one of the world’s largest leading software which includes Oracle data miner, Oracle R Advanced Analytics for Hadoop and Oracle Big Data Discovery. It is the third biggest software company. The initial investment of this system was $2000 and the annual revenue exceed up to $9.7 billion. Speed of a “tuned” Oracle database and application is quite good, even with large databases.  Oracle refer to >100 GB databases and have personal experience administering 10 GB databases.  The performance is not only "raw", but includes consideration of performance with locking and transaction control. Oracle's PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management (SCM) provides a cohesive yet flexible solution for the synchronized supply chain, driving efficiencies in cost savings over your entire supply chain—including your plan-to-produce and order-to-cash business processes.

Cost Comparison Between SAS and Oracle

Value Comparison Between SAS and Oracle

B. Systems, Applications, Products (SAP):

SAP- SAS as a valuable supplement to Walmart’s existing software

         Since Walmart already utilizes SAP, the traditional costs, values and risks of choosing SAP over SAS will not be examined. Instead, below is an examination of the SAS benefits provides Walmart in conjunction with SAP software.

SAP Software offers functions related to….

• Inbound/outbound Processing
• Integrated Labeling
• Storage Optimization
• Picking/Packing Automation
• Kitting Support
• Labor Management Cross-dock Planning (3)

SAS’s functions:

As you may have noticed from the titles of the unique service functions from SAP, that these services are more specialized for inventory efficiency management. SAS software is more specialized for inventory optimization/efficiency with the added focus of forecasting prediction and automatization of inventory functions to eliminate human work demand. These missing focus areas, when applied to Walmart’s massive supply chain, can yield significant efficiency improvements and lowered costs related to supply chain.

C. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS):

When describing SPSS in comparison to SAS, the work “simplicity” comes to mind. SPSS focuses on comfort ability and ease of use for anyone utilizing its functions. This brings great value for this enhances functionality, needing little major training to understand its functions. On a wide range it appeals to the average worker who uses excel for its platform is very similar. The creation of graphs and graphics to analyze data are on a point and click interface as oppose to an in-depth design to produce functional reports.

Cost wise SPSS is not nearly as expensive as the SAS. SAS base version is 1.75 times more expensive on the upfront single installation side than the SPSS base version. License wise, SPSS is based on a perpetual license compared to SAS which is on a year to year renewal, making the longevity of SAS ownership to be more expensive. However for the level and depth of analysis that SAS brings, SPSS would not be able to provide. This opens the risk of establishing a system such as SPSS in a large enterprise such as Walmart. With the daily level of big data that Walmart produces, a basic analytic software will not yield satisfactory results. The limitations that comes with SPSS is its major risk in implementing for Walmart. 

Reference

Columbus, L. (2014, May 12). Gartner’s ERP market share update shows the future of cloud ERP is now. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/05/12/gartners-erp-market-share-update-shows-the-future-of-cloud-erp-is-now/#7e0abb3174a1

 Ohri, A. (2008, February 17). Comparing Base SAS and SPSS. Retrieved July 2, 2016, from https://decisionstats.com/2008/02/17/comparing-sas-and-spss/ 

3) Carias, M. (2016, January/February). Retrieved July 6, 2016, from http://supply-chain-management.softwareinsider.com/l/32/SAP-ERP

4) SAS, Marketing (2016, May/June). Supply Chain Intelligence. Retrieved July 6, 2016, from http://www.sas.com/en_us/software/supply-chain.html#view-all-products