Information Revolution: Using the Information Evolution Model to Grow Your Business

Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, SAS
Jim Davis, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for SAS, is responsible for providing strategic direction for SAS products, solutions and services as well as global messaging about SAS.
Upholding the company’s focus to be customer driven, Davis helped lead the transformation of SAS from a tools provider to the customerdriven software solutions provider it is today. He has built a team of strategists with industry-specific expertise who research the marketplace and partner with engineers in R&D to hone customized solutions for each industry. He has overseen a dramatic increase in SAS’ profile.
Also known for his industry leadership, he has helped develop the Information Evolution Model, a means for companies to assess how effectively they use information to drive business. By outlining how information is managed and utilized as a corporate asset, the model enables organizations to evaluate their use of information objectively, providing a framework for making improvements necessary to compete in today’s global arena.
With a bachelor’s degree in computer science from North Carolina State University, Davis began his career as a software developer, providing systems for large newspaper publishers. He went on to manage software development and information technology for a large publishing organization in the southeastern United States, and then to assume the general manager role for a regional business magazine in Charlotte, N.C.
He then returned to technology leadership, directing IT operations for a global engineering society based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Davis joined SAS in 1994 as an enterprise computing specialist focused on IT issues. He served as program manager for data warehousing, one of SAS’ first global projects to incorporate customer feedback in the development process. It was in this role that he began to develop the model for continuous communication among engineers, marketing experts, and customers that he champions today. From there he was promoted to director of product strategy, and then vice president of Worldwide Marketing before assuming his current role.

Vice President, Professional Services Division, SAS International
Gloria Miller heads the international professional services division (PSD), is the executive manager for the development of the SAS Industry Intelligence Solution development team, and is on the board of Directors of SAS Global Services (SGS).
Miller oversees PSD’s mission to provide consulting and education services around SAS software offerings in 45 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Her team has developed an extensive knowledge management practice, which is heavily used to share skills and best practices around the world and which serves as the basis for SAS’ leading-edge industry solutions.
As executive manager for the development of the SAS Industry Intelligence Solutions, Miller is responsible for the company’s family of solutions for various industries, including banking, telecommunications, retail, and insurance. SAS solutions help organizations gain the insight they need to effectively implement business strategies, retain and grow customer relationships, maximize profits, leverage existing technology, and take full advantage of enterprise-wide data. These flexible, extensible solutions include prebuilt, industry-specific data and analytical models, as well as streamlined processes and techniques that speed up both implementation and results, giving customers a fast track to significant ROI.
In addition, Miller sits on the board of directors of SAS Global Services (SGS) operations headquartered in Pune, India. A subsidiary of SAS, SGS is focused on developing software products and solutions, and is part of the company’s global research and development (R&D) efforts.
Throughout her career of more than 17 years in the IT industry, Miller has received accolades for her skills in full life-cycle systems development, data modeling, application development, postproduction support, database administration, database performance tuning, and end-user training.
Miller holds a masters degree in business administration from Bowie State University and a bachelor of science degree from Augusta State University in Augusta, Georgia.

Senior Vice President, Strategy, SAS International
As senior vice president of strategy with SAS International, Allan Russell works closely with development teams in Cary to ensure that SAS software meets and anticipates the needs of SAS’ international customers.
He also directs European software development projects. With over 25 years experience working for SAS’ International head office in Heidelberg he has accumulated in-depth expertise of every area of SAS software and the technologies it supports. He also has extensive knowledge of the business applications of SAS from talking, and listening to, SAS customers.
Russell is one of the principle authors of SAS’ intelligence platform, an open and scaleable architecture that allows for rapid development of end-to-end intelligence systems that meet user needs and are easy to adapt as those needs change.
He graduated in computing science from Glasgow University in 1975.