ZenGuard Offers Customized Support for Your SAS Analytics Platform

A powerful yet flexible tool for data management and advanced analytics, SAS is an industry leader for real-time statistical insights. But like most, if not all, enterprise software critical to your business, it still requires trained administrators to keep it running smoothly and efficiently.

If you’ve recently implemented a SAS platform, you may find its maintenance demands exceeding your internal resources. Or upon recognizing the potential of SAS, your organization may have stepped up its analytics goals. In either case, your team requires more support so your organization doesn’t miss a beat.

Experienced and qualified SAS administrators can be difficult to find, especially for more complex environments. And even if you find the right person with the qualifications to manage your SAS platform, the reality of hiring and training means that it could be six months after they join your organization before help arrives.

Fortunately, there is another solution. Zencos offers a cost-effective way to manage and administer both SAS and its open source counterparts to satisfy your organization’s data analytics needs. Our ZenGuard support service enhances your team’s capabilities by adding the resources you need to handle the administrative demands of a modern analytics environment.

ZenGuard ensures your SAS environment is healthy while allowing your users to complete their day-to-day work without interruption. Whether you need industry-specific expertise or simply another set of skilled hands, ZenGuard provides the expert assistance to keep your goals on track.

Your Business Needs More Than Technology Support for Its Data Analytics

Given the specific yet far-reaching skill set SAS administration requires, expertise is crucial to the stability of your platform. Having operated in partnership with SAS for decades, Zencos has the technical chops and experience to manage and maintain your environment.

While expertise is critical, ZenGuard is ultimately about forming a relationship with your business. We assign two dedicated technical support staff to your organization with the goal of becoming an extension of your internal team. The goal is not just to understand your business cases and end users but your IT policies as well. In the case of regulated industries like banking or clinical research, we’re also experienced with managing change control processes to allow you get the most work accomplished in the shortest amount of time while still meeting those critical quality controls.

ZenGuard clients come to Zencos in two ways. The first is after Zencos has  deployed their SAS platform. This gives Zencos a deep familiarity with the structure of their business and a head start on support. The second is when a customer has already deployed their platform but realizes they need support.  For the latter, the partnership begins with a comprehensive on-boarding process.

If the case where Zencos did not do the original deployment, the first month of a new client engagement is used to get to know your environments and processes, the specs of your data, and whatever issues you may be encountering.  Even though there is an on boarding phase, it’s very common to have an immediate and positive impact.

The early stages of a ZenGuard partnership include interviews to collect environment-level information on how your business functions. Over a busy few weeks, we evaluate what’s working, what isn’t, and then troubleshoot for the best solution. But once your SAS environment is stable, we look at the foundation of your platform to find further possibilities of improvement.

ZenGuard Experts Bring Your SAS Platform to New Heights

For decades Zencos has employed and maintained SAS technologies across multiple industries. Through the insights gained from that experience, ZenGuard doesn’t just offer the ability to maintain your data tools and environment. The service will also determine whether your business data is operating at its best.

We’ll recommend opportunities to automate processes such as restart and cleanup scripts to keep your environment healthy. If your business operates in a BSA regulated industry, we’re also experienced with the AML and anti-fraud tools your organization needs. With our extensive experience, we’ll support and refine complex fraud detection scenarios and ensure they’re functioning properly.

Plus, leveraging our relationship with SAS allows us to support both sides of your software agreement. We act as your advocate in your organization’s relationship with its platform. Through working with SAS to help them understand your needs, we can drive your environment in the right direction. We ensure SAS does their best work and, as a result, allows you to get the most out of that relationship.

These tuning and optimization efforts may take time, but they aren’t additional projects that are part of some up-sell process. They’re built into our holistic approach toward meeting your business goals.

By ensuring your environment is conforming to best practices, our job as administrators becomes easier. And with the assurance that your environment is running efficiently, your job becomes easier too.

ZenGuard is Tailored to Your Business Goals – Not Ours

With a strategic, holistic approach to ensuring your SAS environment is running smoothly, ZenGuard is directed toward satisfying your needs.

Teaching our clients how to do the work we do is built into our process. In one case, our client’s administrator didn’t have a lot of SAS experience and needed training to get up to speed with the environment. As our experience together grew, that client’s support needs evolved to where our monthly level of engagement decreased. While our expertise is still needed by the organization, the level of service has changed over time, which is understandable. ZenGuard isn’t predicated upon maintaining a consistent time commitment for the foreseeable future; it’s about delivering what the client needs.

Because ultimately, ZenGuard is a partnership. And, as a result of the strong relationships the service builds, our team is among the first told about changes to our clients’ business goals. From there, whether through a new software upgrade or separate project, the  business needs are quickly and effectively addressed.

If your organization is in the early stages of implementing SAS or an open source data platform, the administrative demands can be overwhelming to manage. For whatever additional support you need, ZenGuard can help.