Companies typically capture data from diverse sources that are often raw and unstructured information. It can be a challenge for businesses to process and translate that data into more quantitative insights. Text analytics has been recognized as an evolving data processing tool converting voluminous amounts of data into meaningful ones. The technology is being used in an array of applications across different sectors, including retail, BFSI, healthcare, FMCG, telecommunications, and government, among others. Text analytics can also be combined with other advanced analytics. Widely used data sources for text analytics include social networks, internal email, inbound customer email, news articles, online discussion forums and CRM customer service notes.

Unstructured text is the largest human-generated data source, offering a wealth of insights for organisations able to uncover them. SAS helps businesses capitalise on the massive amounts of text data, discovering trends and opportunities that otherwise would have been missed. As a result, SAS was named a Leader in AI-based text analytics in two reports, The Forrester Wave: AI-Based Document-Focused Text Analytics Platforms, Q2 2020 and The Forrester Wave: AI-Based People-Focused Text Analytics Platforms, Q2 2020. "Unstructured text data offers access to an array of insights from which businesses can benefit hugely," says Matthew Stainer, NLP Specialist, SAS UK & Ireland. "Understanding this data would be a mammoth task without technology to immediately spot patterns and interpret findings. With SAS Visual Text Analytics, organisations can unlock more value from their data than ever, which in turn can power better business decisions and boost customer experiences."

According to Forrester, document capture options and mining text from images and cursive writing in multiple languages are key differentiators for document-focused enterprise text analytics platforms, which focus on longer documents, such as contracts, insurance claims, invoices, and purchase orders. The software helps users with sentiment analysis, trend analysis, data preparation and visualization and hybrid modeling approaches. The report states, "SAS Visual Text Analytics bolsters SAS' family of formidable analytics products. SAS Visual Text Analytics is one of [SAS'] several applications built on the SAS Viya platform, where all applications share data and model management, BI and analytics GUI and other microservices, resulting in consistent UX."