As part of the expansion, the two companies intend to jointly 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, said a press release.

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 functional business knowledge with SAS's analytics solutions and capabilities to help companies and government organizations understand and implement predictive analytics solutions, the release further said.

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.

"Our enhanced relationship with SAS is a key element of Accenture's strategy of aggressively addressing the opportunities around the next generation of analytics," said William D. Green, Accenture's chairman & CEO.

"Companies that use predictive analytics to derive actionable insights from data and then use those insights to shape decisions, can improve business outcomes and substantially outperform competitors over the long term," Green added.

The Accenture SAS Analytics Group plans to initially focus on developing a series of predictive solutions for the financial services industry, including banking and insurance; healthcare services, including payer/provider and pharmaceuticals; as well as the public sector, in areas such as federal and human services.

"During previous downturns, companies that thrived used data insights to produce lasting competitive advantage," said Dave Rich, managing director, Accenture Analytics. "Companies today can use predictive analytics to gain deeper insight that has not been previously obtainable, allowing decisions to be made more quickly and business performance to be improved."