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Why should a prominent florist establishment be so interested in business analytics?

Ask the folk at 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. and they would give you many good reasons.

Better customer relations, lower costs and increased profits – are just a few of them.

Headquartered in Long Island, N.Y., 1-800-Flowers is an online and phone merchant that sells fresh flowers, plants, gift baskets, gourmet foods and more to customers the world over.

As the company's operations and clientele grew, staying current with customer tastes and buyer profiles became a challenge.

"How does an old guy keep up?" asked Jim McCann, founder and CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC., who has seen his business expand exponentially since he opened his first retail store in 1976.

To assist with this task of "keeping up", in 2003, the company deployed a customer relationship management (CRM) application from Cary, N.C.-based SAS Inc.

Among other things, the new application helped 1-800-FLOWERS to quickly record and analyze buyer profiles – a critical capability given the nature of its business.

"The better we know who our customers are, the more relevant we can make communication [with them]," said Aaron Cano, the company's vice-president of customer knowledge and marketing planning.

He said this inside knowledge of customer needs helps the company better target its products, determine what "specials" to offer, and do much more.

The SAS tool also minimizes the element of speculation – allowing 1-800-FLOWERS to plan its sales and marketing strategies based on an understanding of real customer needs.

"After all, we can sit here and make business decisions based on what products we think we should offer, but that's not going to fly," said Cano. "We need to understand customers – offering baskets to people who like baskets, and tulips to people who like tulips."

The tool has also worked wonders for the company's marketing initiatives.

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