# Data Controller - Sales & Positioning Playbook

Reference for writing marketing, blog, feed, and sales copy. Covers pain points, target audience, value proposition, packaging, sales motion, and objection handling. Synthesised from the marketing site (`datacontroller.io`), product docs (`docs.datacontroller.io`), and product glossary (`dc/CONTEXT.md`).

## The product in one paragraph

Data Controller for SAS® is a SAS-Powered web application that lets business users safely add, modify and delete data in SAS datasets and databases. Every change goes through an edit-stage-approve workflow: edits are staged, validated at the point of entry, reviewed as a diff (new / changed / deleted rows), approved by a data owner, then loaded - with a full audit trail of who changed what, when, and why. It runs on SAS Viya, SAS 9 EBI and SASjs Server, entirely on-prem / offline (no external network calls). It can write to any database reachable via a SAS libname engine.

## The problem (pain points)

SAS users routinely need to load or fix data manually - steering tables, parameters, mappings, corrections, regulatory adjustments. The status-quo approaches all hurt:

- **Network drive + batch job** - drop a CSV/Excel on a share, wait for a nightly job. Every new input means a new job to build, test, document and deploy. File-format drift breaks batches at the worst times (month end).
- **Direct SAS code / Enterprise Guide edits** - requires granting end users MODIFY access to sensitive data locations. High risk of locking datasets, no audit trail, no approval.
- **Asking a DBA / IT to run a script** - change requests, queues, delays, blame games between business and IT.
- **Bespoke in-house capture apps** - years of development and testing, and a "black box" nobody wants to maintain.
- **EUC sprawl** - uncontrolled Excel/VBA applications on network shares: opaque access, no version control, no lineage, audit failure. Regulators care (SOX, BCBS, national DQ circulars). Fines are real: Morgan Stanley $5m (2020), Citibank $400m (2020), DTCC £350k (2021).

The five measurable cost areas (see blog post "ROI and Payback"):

1. **Development time** - reduced to zero (zero-code, config-driven; the grid is generated dynamically from table metadata).
2. **Deployment time** - reduced to zero (config change in the UI, not a code release).
3. **Batch incidents** - invalid data cannot be submitted (validated on arrival).
4. **Data quality issues** - schema-based automatic rules plus configurable frontend validations and backend hook scripts.
5. **Compliance costs** - single source of truth, full audit trail, Excel originals retained with each submission; no reperformed audits of unsecured EUC code.

## Target audience

**Verticals:** regulated industries with large SAS estates - Banking, Insurance, Pharma / Life Sciences. Typical use cases: regulatory reporting adjustments, actuarial / bitemporal reporting (Allianz), DWH steering-table management (AFA försäkring), data catalogs and lineage (Siemens Healthineers), BICC / BI competency centres (DER Touristik).

**Personas:**

- **Economic buyer:** Head of BI / Data Platform owner, CDO, Head of Regulatory Reporting. Cares about OpEx, risk reduction, audit outcomes, compliance.
- **Champion:** SAS platform owner / technical manager drowning in ad-hoc data-load requests.
- **End users:** business users (Editors) submitting data; data owners (Approvers) signing off; Auditors reviewing history. Roles: Viewer, Editor, Approver, Auditor, Administrator.
- **Gatekeepers:** IT security (satisfied by: on-prem, no external calls, uses existing SASLogon auth, row & column level security, end users never get direct write access to target tables).

**Audience tone (from the LinkedIn guide):** assume competence - don't explain ETL or data warehouses. Speak to their pains: reporting deadlines, audit trails, hand-cranked ETL, EUC risk, OpEx. Professional and direct; no hype.

## Value proposition / key messages

- **Zero code** - adding a new editable table is configuration, done in the tool itself. Column types, lengths, dropdowns are derived from the target table at runtime.
- **Review / approve workflow** - nothing is applied without 1+ approvals; approvers see only the diff.
- **Full audit history** - who, when, why, what; original uploaded files retained.
- **Secure** - existing SAS authentication; RLS and CLS enforced server-side; no end-user write access to targets.
- **Real-time** - intra-day concurrent updates via lock table and queuing; loads abort if the table changed since the diff.
- **Any database** - via SAS libname engines; supports retained keys, composite keys, SCD2 (TXTEMPORAL) and full BITEMPORAL history.
- **Validation at point of entry** - HARDREGEX/SOFTREGEX, dropdowns, min/max, NOT NULL, plus hook scripts to run arbitrary SAS programs before/after edit or approve.
- **Saves vs alternatives** - years of dev/test vs bespoke build; no black box.

## Packaging & pricing

Four packages, all with **unlimited users** (since v6), all flavours of SAS (Viya / EBI / SASjs Server):

| Package | Price | Shape |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Community | FREE | 35 tables/library, 15 view rows, 5 upload rows, 1 viewbox, best-endeavours support |
| Bronze | 12k EUR pa | 1 production env, 100 tables/library, 100 rows, 8hr SLA, SASjs support |
| Silver | 21k EUR pa | 2 production envs, unlimited tables/rows, 6 viewboxes, in-house SAS app support |
| Gold | Contact us | Unlimited envs, 4hr SLA, developer + consulting days, **perpetual licence option** |

- Add-on: Developer Days (new product features) at 600 EUR/day for all plans; consulting rates at sasapps.io/pricing.
- Pricing goals: Transparent, Simple, Fair. Full public price list on the site - a differentiator; use it.
- Support: tickets via support.4gl.io or support@datacontroller.io, severity levels 1-4, SLAs per package, escalation by video call between managers.

## Sales motion / execution strategy

1. **Land with the free tier.** The Community package and the evaluation SPK (single-file import, ~minutes to install on SAS 9) make trying the product nearly frictionless. Since v6.1 the source is also available for anyone to build and evaluate. Push evaluation hard - it is the top of funnel. The eval version is deliberately not production-grade (BASE-engine config tables, table-lock risk, unlicensed interface) - the natural upgrade path is built in.
2. **Discovery call as the primary CTA.** Marketing (LinkedIn, blog, feed) always ends with "book a Discovery Call". Content strategy: hook with the pain (EUC risk, ETL sprawl, audit pain), not the product.
3. **Expand from one use case.** Typical wedge: steering tables / mapping tables / parameter tables in a reporting team. Expansion levers: more tables, more environments, more business units, API-driven submissions (API Explorer since v6).
4. **Sell the business case, not features.** Use the ROI/Payback blog post (five cost areas + calculator) so the champion can build an internal business case. Quantify dev hours, batch incidents, audit effort.
5. **Partner channel.** Resellers exist (e.g. SaasNow in the Netherlands); partner-purchased deals may have partner first-line support.
6. **Roadmap as a sales tool.** The public roadmap is customer-driven - "features requested by customers get built" - and Gold includes Developer Days. Position the product as one that listens.
7. **Proof points.** Named customer stories (AFA, Allianz, Siemens Healthineers, DER Touristik), SAS 2021 Excellence in Innovation Award finalist.

## Getting it installed (technical ease-of-adoption)

- Deploys entirely inside the customer's existing SAS platform - no new infrastructure, no external assets or network calls at runtime (passes strict security reviews).
- SAS 9 EBI: SPK import via SAS Management Console / DI Studio; run the configurator stored process; done. Requirements documented at docs.datacontroller.io (`dci-requirements`, `dci-deploysas9`, `dci-stpinstance`).
- Viya and SASjs Server deployments also documented (`deploy-viya`).
- Instillation/deployment support is in-scope for all paid support plans.

## Licensing

- Annual subscription per package (Bronze/Silver/Gold); perpetual licence available at Gold.
- Community tier is free; the evaluation build is governed by an evaluation agreement (Bowe IO Ltd) - evaluation/non-production use only, no redistribution, no reverse engineering, "as is".
- Embedded Handsontable requires a licence key for commercial use - handled as part of paid deployments.

## Objection handling (from the FAQ)

- **"Can it change our data model?"** - No; it updates data, not structure. Positioned as a safety feature.
- **"Our preferred database?"** - Yes, any engine SAS can reach (incl. Snowflake, Redshift support announcements).
- **"Retained / surrogate keys?"** - Supported, along with composite primary keys, SCD2 and bitemporal loads.
- **"Security review will block it."** - On-prem, offline, existing SASLogon, RLS/CLS, no direct target access, no metadata modification after install.
- **"We could build this."** - Yes, at the cost of years of dev/test plus an unmaintainable black box; DC is proven, supported, documented, and source-available for evaluation.

## Copy rules when writing sales-adjacent content

- Regular dashes, not em-dashes. No hard-wrapped Markdown.
- Use product glossary terms exactly (submission, staging, target table, load type, etc. - see `dc/CONTEXT.md`).
- ® on first mention of SAS®.
- CTA conventions per channel: site content may link directly; LinkedIn puts links in the first comment (see `.agents/docs/linkedin.md`).
