SAS 9 solutions pack powerful punch

SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today announced plans to deliver seven software solutions this year that will take advantage of the new SAS 9 Intelligence Platform, the most significant technology change in SAS's 28-year history.

SAS will deliver all its existing solutions on the SAS 9 platform, providing organizations with an integrated suite of solutions that addresses key business challenges. The first seven SAS solutions on SAS 9 are SAS Marketing Automation, SAS Risk Dimensions, SAS Strategic Performance Management, SAS Financial Management Solutions, SAS Supplier Relationship Management, SAS Activity-Based Management and SAS IT Management Solutions.

Each of these solutions will help organizations go beyond business intelligence as they know it. Through the new intelligence platform and enhanced analytics of SAS 9, the solutions will help organisations gather, store, analyse and distribute information more quickly than ever before. And with the new user interfaces of SAS 9, more people throughout a company will be able to tap SAS's powerful predictive analytics and data management capabilities to solve critical business pains.

"These first seven SAS solutions on the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform will help organisations access quality data and extract information and intelligence, and then deliver this intelligence to decision-makers throughout the organisation - from front-line managers to senior executives," said Jim Goodnight, president and CEO of SAS.

"Built on the analytic and data management strengths of SAS, and now boosted by SAS 9 technologies, each of these solutions will pack quite a punch individually. When taken together and integrated, they will provide an extremely powerful, strategy-focused view of the entire organisation, including customer behaviour, supplier management, financial performance and more," Goodnight added.

SAS 9 builds on SAS's 28 years of expertise and experience with data management and analytics. SAS has created a new intelligence platform that will help companies do more with the data and systems that they already have, and ensure that more and more people within those companies - from the factory floor to the boardroom - can use the predictive analytics and data management capabilities of SAS.

Companies today face a challenging economic environment, increased competition and shrinking IT budgets. They are being asked to do more with less. SAS 9 and the solutions built upon it will help them better harness and exploit their customer, operational, supply chain and other data, as well as the systems already in place, to make faster and more accurate decisions about where they should go next.

For some time, SAS has been used by business managers and executives, as well as statisticians and quantitative experts, to turn data into intelligence. With SAS 9 and its new user interfaces and capabilities, this group of potential users will expand. With SAS 9, more than 80% of the people in an organisation will have access to the power of SAS.

"SAS is not only serving up the new industry standard for business intelligence with SAS 9," said Art Cooke, president of SAS International, "we're also unveiling plans for a world-class suite of powerful SAS solutions on SAS 9. These solutions, built on the extremely flexible and scalable technology platform that is SAS 9, will address specific business needs and help organizations better understand their customers, suppliers and internal operations. And the solutions will do this while delivering the unparalleled performance and rapid ROI that are hallmarks of all SAS software."

The initial seven SAS solutions on the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform are:

a. SAS Marketing Automation will be the first in SAS's family of customer intelligence solutions (www.sas.com/solutions/crm) to be launched on the new SAS 9 Intelligence Platform. These solutions address key areas such as marketing automation, marketing optimisation and customer retention, and are designed to give organisations the insights they need to develop and implement smarter customer strategies and maximise customer profitability. The SAS 9 version of SAS Marketing Automation will be available in the second quarter of 2004.

b. SAS Risk Dimensions (www.sas.com/solutions/riskmgmt) helps financial services firms and energy companies measure and analyse their risks, meet regulatory reporting requirements, and improve capital allocation. Risk Dimensions provides an open, flexible and extensible environment for data management, risk analysis and risk reporting. It will be available on the SAS 9 platform in the second quarter of 2004.

c. SAS Strategic Performance Management (www.sas.com/solutions/spm) translates company strategy into actions that can be measured and monitored throughout the entire organisation. The results are distributed via the Web and provide employees with the necessary information to analyse, collaborate and successfully implement that strategy. The SAS 9 version will be available in the third quarter of 2004.

d. SAS Financial Management Solutions will be the first in SAS's family of financial intelligence solutions (www.sas.com/solutions/financial) available on the new SAS 9 platform. These solutions help organisations transform raw financial data from across their operations into the financial intelligence needed to demonstrate financial integrity and transparency, equipping them to compete and succeed in a challenging economy. The SAS 9 version of SAS Financial Management Solutions will be available in the third quarter of 2004.

e. SAS Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) (www.sas.com/solutions/srm) addresses procurement and purchasing, a vital link in the supply chain. Through data management and analytics, SAS SRM provides organisations with worldwide insight into suppliers, commodities and procurement activities. With it, they can better understand their overall supplier landscape, minimise risks associated with suppliers, improve negotiation and achieve substantial cost savings. The SAS 9 version will be available in the third quarter of 2004.

f. SAS Activity-Based Management (ABM) (www.sas.com/solutions/abm) integrates with existing financial and operational systems to generate cost and profitability business models that support better overall decision-making. SAS ABM delivers advanced business modelling capabilities, a Web-enabled analysis and reporting interface, and data integration tools to retrieve and transform data from any system. SAS ABM will be available on the SAS 9 platform in the third quarter of 2004.

g. SAS IT Management Solutions (www.sas.com/solutions/itsysmgmt) help companies better manage their IT organisation and infrastructure and evaluate and control IT usage and costs. Combined with SAS's professional services organisation and implementation partners network, IT Management Solutions are the only solutions that address the entire spectrum of IT services - systems, network, Web services, call centres and phone systems - from the data centre to the desktop, across the enterprise and the Internet. SAS IT Management Solutions will be available on the SAS 9 platform in the third quarter of 2004.

As a business partner to more than 42 000 customer sites in 111 countries, SAS remains committed to meeting its customers' changing needs. To this end, SAS reinvested 26% of its annual revenues in 2003 back into research and development. SAS 9 and the planned solutions are clear examples of SAS's commitment to innovation and to its customers' success.