When you go to the analyst event for a technology company focused on analytics, you kind of have to expect that they think analytics is important. In retail, however, that is not a given. And that is the challenge for SAS – and the opportunity.

Data – and the insights that you can derive from data – is important in retail. But it’s another thing entirely to say that it’s more important than the products you sell. That goes against everything that retail has pretty much ever stood for.

But let’s face it. Amazon doesn’t really care what kind of products it sells. The more the better, with no rhyme or reason. There just aren’t that many companies left that can announce they’ll be making major investments in selling both lingerie and car parts in the same year. But for Amazon, the more products the company sells, the more it collects data about customers, and the more insights it has access to. The more insights, the easier it is to sell consumers more stuff, more often. Maybe someday they’ll even make a profit at it!

In the meantime, there’s everyone else. And the biggest difference between Amazon and everyone else is not Amazon’s relentless focus on customer convenience. It’s not their enormous no-holds-barred innovation budget that lets them throw anything against the wall to see if it sticks. It’s not even their AWS division, which effectively subsidizes the retail side. Those are no fun to compete against, sure, but what gives Amazon a leg up over everyone else is data. And the relentless pursuit of collecting data and driving insights from data.

The irony is, traditional retail has access to a whole data set that Amazon doesn’t have – though, with Amazon Go, that could change rapidly. That is the data generated by stores, by shoppers in stores, and by the interaction between shoppers and products while in stores. It also means access to data that reflects the interplay between online and stores – another place where Amazon has no insight.

But retailers have not made the investments to capture this data, though that is changing. And they certainly do not have data as a strategic pillar of their companies, nor the executive mandate to ensure that all of this data is pursued for insights. In retail, data tends to be highly siloed, either ignored or fought over (like between marketing and merchandising over customer data, for example), and valued only in so far as it directly moves sales. Like, right now.

That perspective has to change. The challenge for SAS is they aren’t that used to changing that perspective any longer. The industries that are the big heavies in SAS’s portfolio are industries for whom data is the product – banking & finance, insurance, etc. These companies understand that data is central to their strategy because none of these companies would exist without it.

Retail doesn’t get that yet. They still need education and hand-holding, and they need to be smacked awake at the executive level that it’s not okay to leave analytics strategies siloed within functional organizations, or let people fight to keep operational analytics at the expense of the whole organization having access to insights. Data management and analysis aren’t valued as core skill sets fundamental to the company’s success – picking the right products is. Coming up with a killer marketing campaign is. And even though good analytics are implied in those capabilities, analytics for the most part are ignored as a strategy.

That’s got to change. SAS is a company that is doing all the things they need to do to be prepared for the data avalanche that is coming – from IoT, from machine learning and cognitive computing, from yet more sources of customer data as their engagement touchpoints evolve. SAS is putting its weight behind exactly the kind of analytics that retailers need to differentiate against Amazon – omni-channel analytics that stitch store and online, customer and product, intention and behavior all together to create new opportunities for insights.

Hopefully, retailers will be ready to recognize the opportunity for what it truly is – a chance to differentiate on data. And if they don’t, hopefully SAS is willing to do what it takes to show them. It’s an opportunity for both.