Paper 236-27

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High Energy SAS – Managing the SAS Community in a Large CorporationMark Jordan, Capital One Services, Inc., Glen Allen, VAJim Alessio, Capital One Services, Inc., Glen Allen, VA

ABSTRACTIt is a challenge to oversee the installation, maintenance,training, and user support of any large software packagein a rapidly growing organization. This paper will sharethe opportunities, bumps, and triumphs of administeringSAS in a corporation that has seen its SAS usercommunity grow from 50 to more than 800 in just threeyears.

INTRODUCTIONCapitalOne’s SAS users come from diverse backgroundsand perform a broad spectrum of tasks, while operatingSAS on multiple platforms including mainframes, UNIX,NT servers, and PC desktop installations. Onceconcentrated mainly in Virginia, our users are nowgeographically located from California to South Africa.They use a wide variety of SAS tools, includingSAS/IntrNet, SAS/AF, Enterprise Miner, and EnterpriseGuide where once Base SAS and SAS/STAT were themodules of choice. This paper will address many aspectsof our program including:

user training technical support (help desk) developing and promoting an in-house SUG maintaining a sense of community in a

geographically diverse work force managing inter-departmental and SAS vendor

relationships

-- and how it is done with a team of six associates!

BACKGROUND

CAPITAL ONE – THE COMPANYCapitalOne spun-off from Signet Bank as an independentcompany in 1995 with more than five million credit cardcustomers – a top ten card issuer. It has grown rapidly inthe past seven years with a global customer base of 40.1million today. The number of associates has grown fromless than 100 in 1995 to over 20,000 today. CapitalOnehas also expanded from a single location in Richmond,Virginia, to locations throughout the United States as wellas in other countries. The company now operates in over25 sites in the Richmond area, northern Virginia, Dallas,Seattle, Tampa, Boise, Boston, Canada, the UnitedKingdom, France, and South Africa. CapitalOne has alsomoved into financial services other than credit cards,including auto financing, installment loans, and specialloans for elective medical procedures, to name a few.

Capital One “is an information business,much more than a banking business”

Nigel MorrisCapitalOne President and Chief

Operating Officer

Scientific testing on a massive scale is the core ofCapitalOne’s proprietary Information Based Strategy(IBS). Over 40,000 tests were conducted last year ofproducts, prices, features, packages, marketing channels,credit policies, account management, customer services,collections and retention.

SAS AT CAPITAL ONEPrior to 1998, only a handful of associates used SAS onPC’s and on the mainframe, primarily a group ofstatisticians within the Marketing and Analysis division.SAS became the core model building software by 1998and CapitalOne was ready to make a long-termcommitment to the use of SAS. A separate group wasformed to manage SAS for a user base of 25 to 30. Thefunction of this group was to serve as SAS Institutecontact and to maintain the software on each platform.Most help for SAS users was provided by end-user‘experts’.

By 2000, the number of users had grown to 260 with mostaccessing SAS on their PC and 15 other platforms(mainframe, UNIX, and NT). The SAS group wasexpanded into the Enterprise SAS Solutions (ESS) team.The team’s focus shifted from maintaining externalrelationships and the software to a much broader supportof our SAS users. The emphasis was on building acommunity as the number of SAS users grew to over 800,spread throughout the United States and the world.

Capital One SAS Users

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200

400

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Jan-98 Jan-99 Jan-00 Jan-01 Jan-02

Growth of SAS Users at Capital One

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While growth in the SAS community was phenomenal,there were challenges because we lacked a strong ITchampion for SAS and for the ESS team which sprangfrom the Marketing and Analysis SAS users communityinstead of information systems.

THE SAS COMMUNITY AT CAPITAL ONEThe rapid growth of CapitalOne and the spread of IBS intoevery area of the company – marketing, customer service,operations, risk – soon propelled SAS use beyond thedomain of the statisticians. SAS quickly became a majortool for Data Analysts, MIS Analysts, Business Analysts,Operations Analysts, Financial Analysts in every divisionof the company – IT, Risk, Collections, Account Setup,

and Card Operations. Besides individual use, teams ofSAS programmers were formed to support non-technicalusers. The Information Technology groups began usingSAS IT Service Vision (ITSV) software for capacitymonitoring and planning on a large scale. It was clear thatto properly service and support this diverse set of users acommunity focus was needed. Thus began a newdirection for the ESS.

ESS SUPPORT OF THE USER COMMUNITYESS took a holistic approach to supporting the SAS usercommunity, identifying major areas of need, and devisingstrategies to deal with those needs. This paper focuseson two major areas:

Maintaining the benefits of community in adisaggregate organization

Maintaining vendor relationships

USER COMMUNITY MANAGEMENTIt was important to develop a sense of community in orderto maximize our SAS resources. This required definingthe benefits of sharing such things as best practices,lessons learned, and cross-business collaboration. ESSwas able to build on CapitalOne’s unique culture to create

an environment that met users’ goals and enhanced theirskill sets and work styles.

TrainingThe ESS team coordinates all SAS training withinCapitalOne. At first, the ESS team assumed responsibilityfor all components of training support – course syllabi,student registrations, classroom logistics, instructorassignments, material preparation, and so on. Initialtraining classes were primarily "off the shelf" programsfrom SAS institute. By conducting user surveys, miningrecords of "help desk" user questions, and anticipatingthe company's future needs, ESS has tailored a muchmore broad-based and highly effective training program.

There are now several channels for training support:

Stand-alone instructor-based courses Standard SAS Institute instructor-based

courses offered on-site and off-site throughthe Enterprise Public Training Offer (EPTO)

On-site contractor instructor-based courses,developed in collaboration with ESS andspecifically tailored to CapitalOne’s needs

CapitalOne developed courses taught byESS staff or other CapitalOne associates

CapitalOne developed modules that areintegrated into non-SAS training courses andprograms and taught by ESS staff or otherCapitalOne associates.

Intranet-based instruction via SAS OnlineTutor

training software – ‘at your desk’ Centrally located self-paced classes. This

innovative approach provides SAS classmanuals, sample data, a quiet classroom with acomputer, and an ESS staff member to answerquestions. This makes possible cost-effectivetraining where each student learns at his ownpace.

‘Brown Bag’ lunches – a monthly one-hour serieswhere short topics or insights are presented byESS team members or other SAS users. Theseare held in Richmond and ‘broadcast’ to remoteCapitalOne sites via Microsoft NetMeeting.

While ESS retained overall responsibility for the SAStraining program, including selecting courses andmonitoring the quality of classes, a CapitalOne traininggroup now administers all formal courses and handles theday-to-day logistics. This permits tracking of participationby course and by individual for development andcertification recording.

ConsultingThe ESS team provides consulting services for projectsthroughout the company, including programming supportfor small one-time projects and development support forlong-term, more permanent projects. The ESS team doesnot program or maintain ongoing reporting and operationalactivities and prefers a collaborative approach to allprogramming efforts - providing training for the ultimateowner during the development phase. ESS 'jump starts'projects then passes the standard programming andmaintenance functions on to the project owners.

ESS Team Logo

Location UsersRichmond, VA 81%Northern VA 8%Dallas, TX 3%

Nottingham, UK 3%Tampa, FL 3%Boise, ID 2%

All Other Locations 1%

Distribution of SAS Users

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The team acts as a liaison between a CapitalOne group,SAS Institute, and other SAS contractors. ESS staff is alsoa resource in identifying SAS-based solutions to problemsand provides internal consulting services in the earlyphases of project definition to assess the feasibility andeffectiveness of using SAS.

Technical SupportIn the early days, ESS made a great push to gainrecognition in the SAS community. An outreach effort waslaunched in 2000 in an attempt to ensure that every SASuser had a personal dialog with an ESS team member tomake our users aware of our services. A multi-channelapproach using the Intranet, phone calls, email, snail-mailand meetings raised user awareness from under 40% toabout 98% during the subsequent year. ESS distributed

business card size magnets listing the team members’names, telephone numbers and areas of expertise to allSAS users. Satisfaction among SAS users soared.

The success of the outreach effort soon brought troublesof its own. ESS programmers suffered constantinterruptions for user questions while trying to program fortheir assigned projects. Users had a favorite teammember and were frequently hesitant to speak to anothermember when their primary contact was unavailable, thusdelaying response. Team morale and user satisfactionsuffered as the team's scope expanded without addingmore personnel.

ESS took a technological approach to solving theseproblems - we are, after all, geeks at heart. The teambegan using Microsoft NetMeeting, allowing us to viewand type code on a remote user's PC desktop. At the endof the session, the user has his solution "in place" with noneed for follow up email. This cut the average help callfrom 30 to 10 minutes - a tremendous boost in productivitywithout significant expenditure. Next, ESS promoted the‘help desk’ concept. A special "SAS Help" email addressand phone number were established, with all teammembers granted access. The team split responsibility formonitoring SAS Help into shifts and committed to makingthe initial response to inquiries within one-hour (duringnormal working hours). We then launched anotherpublicity campaign to educate the users on the newsystem. This dramatically improved response time for theusers and decreased interruptions for the ESS teammembers, once again boosting productivity at very littlecost. User satisfaction returned to its normally high levels,and team morale has significantly improved. Anunexpected benefit of sharing an Outlook identity is theSAS Help calendar. The team uses this to schedule out-of-office time for training, vacations, etc., and for notingthe dates and times of special events that affect the SAScommunity, such as SUGI and OneSUG days.

Strength in CommunityAn active and robust user community is essential to getthe most value from any software product. Identifying theSAS user community is at the core of the ESS teammission. Besides promoting user participation in training,the ESS team has developed several avenues to bringSAS users together to share experiences and bestpractices.

A record number of CapitalOne associates, 67, attendedSUGI last year. ESS manages the SUGI experience for allof our associates, coordinating to obtain group rates andgood lodging rates, and making plans to maximize thetraining and social value. Prior to SUGI, the ESS teambrings attendees together several times to prepare for theconvention. Participants share meeting schedules, andgroups with similar interests make sure someone iscovering important presentations. The ESS team createdgames to foster interactions among CapitalOne attendeesand with other SUGI attendees, with prizes awarded onthe afternoon of SUGI’s last day. Shirts are distributedand the CapitalOne contingent wears them on one day ofthe conference. This adds to our sense of community andserves as a special means of publicizing CapitalOne.

Returning from SUGI, the "away team" meets again toshare their conference experiences. The CapitalOnecontingent selects the SUGI presentation they felt was the

SAS Help Magnet

SUGI 25 Shirt Logo

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most applicable to CapitalOne, and a SUGI presenter isinvited to CapitalOne SAS Days held in the fall.Individuals share their experiences with their businessteams during subsequent team meetings.

Besides participating in SUGI and the Virginia SUG(VASUG), CapitalOne users have their own companySUG, OneSUG, which has become the focal point for in-house activities. OneSUG had a couple of false starts andhas tried several different models. We have found that,without ESS acting as the "Executive Committee",OneSUG activity dies off over time, as the volunteers'priorities naturally shift to more tangible business results.Yet, OneSUG helps to establish the sense of communitywithin the user base. Currently OneSUG has evolved intoa loose organization that primarily funnels speakers to theBrown Bag lunch series and acts as sponsor for SASDays.

Our annual SAS Days convention began two years ago.The first SAS Day was a one-day event consisting ofseveral concurrent tracks with presentations by SASInstitute staff. Our goal was to develop this into a mini-SUGI within CapitalOne. Last year’s SAS Days brought

us closer to that goal. This two-day event consisted ofpapers presented by CapitalOne SAS users,presentations by SAS Institute, and the outside speakerselected by our SUGI 26 attendees. There were evenseveral "coder's corner" sessions. SAS Days werepublicized in a multi-channel blitz, including posters, snail-mail flyers, and email. Registration was handled via aSAS/IntrNet application on the ESS Intranet web site,serving not only as a great way of collecting registrationdata but also as a demonstration of a valuable and new (tous) SAS technology. Many of our SAS users attended, aswell as several "walk-ins" who had never used SAS. SASDays provided something for everyone, from high-levelexecutive overviews to hard-core coding demonstrations.SAS Days provides a unique and valuable forum for usersto share their proprietary work. The program will beexpanded this year to include hands-on workshops.

VENDOR MANAGEMENT

CapitalOne negotiated a multi-year Enterprise SASlicense for the first time in 1998, giving our usersunprecedented access to a wide array of SAS products on

SAS Days 2001 – Day 1 Posters

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multiple platforms. As the company ventured into newareas of the world, and our associates needed to havetheir favorite tools with them, it became obvious that aninternational agreement on the same scale was required.Negotiation of an international agreement was completedin December of 2001, giving our current and future foreignoffices the same easy access to SAS that ESS provides inNorth America.

Just as the ESS team is a partner with our SAS users, weare also closely aligned with SAS. ESS is active in "SASevangelism" collaborating closely with our SAS salesrepresentative to identify and capitalize on ways ofleveraging our SAS assets to their full potential. SASprovides us great technical expertise and resources tohelp kick start internal projects. Several of our users havemet with SAS product developers and engaged in dialogaimed at improving the next generation of SAS. The ESSteam frequently meets with SAS personnel to exchangeideas, discuss opportunities, and keep each otherapprised of future developments. We have included SASrepresentatives in our SUGI fun events, Brown Baglunches and other arenas.

CONCLUSIONThe ESS has set the standard at CapitalOne for buildingstrong relationships with its user community and providingworld-class service. Early this year, an agreement wasreached positioning ESS within IT. The team will be themodel for support teams centered on other enterprisesoftware packages in use at CapitalOne. This should alsoimprove collaboration with the platform services group andgive ESS the IT champion we need.

There are several new challenges facing ESS in thecoming year, including devising an appropriate charge-back scheme to cover the costs of the SAS license andthe team's overhead in these increasingly cost-conscioustimes. Expansion into new international markets bringswith it a need to consider multi-lingual support, and whatdo you do about those pesky time zones?

With a demonstrated history of rising to the challenge, wepredict a bright future for our SAS community, and for allof CapitalOne!

TRADEMARK CITATIONSAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or servicenames are registered trademarks or trademarks of SASInstitute Inc. in the USA and other countries. indicatesUSA registration.

Other brand and product names are registered trademarksor trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT INFORMATIONYour comments and questions are valued andencouraged. Contact the authors at:

Mark JordanCapital One Services, Inc.Attn: 12060-041111011 West Broad StreetGlen Allen, VA 23060Phone: (804) 967-8493 Fax: (804) 934-5001Email: mark.jordan@capitalone.com

Web: www.capitalone.com

Jim AlessioCapital One Services, Inc.Attn: 12060-041111011 West Broad StreetGlen Allen, VA 23060Phone: (804) 934-5283Fax: (804) 934-5001Email: jim.alessio@capitalone.comWeb: www.capitalone.com

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