Accenture and SAS plan to expand their strategic relationship by jointly developing, implementing, and managing predictive analytics solutions, a first for both companies.

As part of the expansion, the two companies intend to invest in the development of solutions focused on industry-specific predictive analytics applications, starting with the financial services, healthcare, and public service sectors as well as cross-industry solutions in the customer and enterprise management domains. They also plan to begin delivering sophisticated analytical capabilities as a managed service.

In forming the Accenture SAS Analytics Group, the companies intend to bring together Accenture's industry and functional business knowledge with SAS's analytics solutions and capabilities to help companies and government organizations understand and implement predictive analytics solutions. Predictive analytics takes the information made available through standard analytics today and combines it with more sophisticated statistical modeling, forecasting, and optimization techniques to anticipate the impact on business outcomes.