Irish Management Institute (IMI), an executive education provider, has turned to technology from SAS, the global leader in business analytics, to get more answers from its data and better tailor its services to meet demand from the business community.

The not-for-profit organisation, which has promoted best management practices across Ireland for 60 years through its various programmes and qualifications, whether it be for small consultancies or large multinationals, previously used a simple relational database combined with Excel as the basis for a booking system, timetabling and customer relations management (CRM).

Using SAS it can now get answers to queries straight away from the 10,000 companies and over 60,000 individuals listed. This information can also be presented in an easy-to-interpret way and shared across the organisation.

Eva Maguire, Head of Design & Innovation at IMI, said: “It previously took a little while just to run simple queries, such as everyone who attended a particular event within a certain age range. Using SAS we can now get answers straight away to these questions and broader questions such as the changing demographics of individuals stored in the database.

“We can also generate reports on individuals in graduate development programmes following psychometric tests and other data around talent metrics. As well as comparing individuals we can even look at the whole group and identify areas where there are skills gaps among existing graduates.”

John Farrelly, Regional Director, SAS UK & Ireland, commented: “We’re delighted IMI has decided to use SAS to help develop a deeper understanding of its data. In the information economy it’s crucial that all organisations are able to properly collect and analyse that data quickly, to give them the power to know all they need to about their operations.”