SAS delivers virtuoso performance

SAS, the leader in business intelligence (BI), continues to innovate in the performance management arena.

SAS has announced new, enhanced versions of three of its suite of performance management solutions: SAS Financial Management, SAS Human Capital Management and SAS Strategic Performance Management. All three help organisations worldwide improve performance and stimulate profitable growth.

Performance management continues to gain momentum at all levels of organisations, from the executive suite to the factory floor, for example, and from the finance department to marketing. And BI and analytical software have become key ingredients in performance management efforts.

In a February-March 2007 BusinessWeek Research Services survey of more than 300 C-level executives from companies worldwide, roughly half the participants said the biggest benefits of performance management are driving a culture of accountability and aligning operations enterprise-wide.

Successful performance management implementations, participants indicated, lead to better decisions about customers, better alignment of strategies and operational behaviour, and more collaboration among departments.

For successful performance management, a pretty dashboard sitting atop basic reporting applications isn't enough. Only SAS builds performance management capabilities into each solution. For example, SAS ties traditional scorecard features to powerful predictive analytics in software solutions for financial, human capital and activity-based management, as well as customer and supplier management.

The enhanced SAS solutions announced today include:

The latest version of SAS Financial Management improves the accuracy, relevance and timeliness of financial plans, budgets and reports while promoting the alignment and execution of strategy. With SAS's patented calculation engine, financial reports are even more quickly updated, easing decision-making. Data entry is much faster, improving what-if capabilities. The impact of reorganisations, mergers and acquisitions, and accounting policy changes are processed automatically. When everyone works from a single source of consistent, current information, collaboration and decision quality improve.

"Today's leading businesses must innovate to grow," said Jim Davis, Senior Vice-President and CMO of SAS. "Innovation demands performance management initiatives that maximise effectiveness deep in the organisation. SAS helps manage organisational effectiveness and improves performance for increased profitability and competitiveness."

Enhanced SAS Human Capital Management provides a holistic workforce view, human capital scorecarding and predictive analytics to optimise and align human capital strategies. SAS is the only vendor offering a consistent human capital data model designed for workforce analysis, integrating third-party data such as benchmarks with employee data from ERP and transactional systems. This single source for analysis of employee competency, skills and education helps employers identify gaps in their workforce.

"SAS Human Capital Management is critical to our organisation," said Clark C Collins, Human Resource IRM Advisor at the US Bureau of Land Management. "With 10 000 employees spread out through the contiguous western United States, SAS integrates and analyses disparate data sources to give management a comprehensive view of the work, knowledge and capabilities of our entire workforce. For example, SAS helped us address the changes taking place in the organisation due to retirements and to create the most efficient organisation possible."

SAS Strategic Performance Management helps executives achieve strategic goals by focusing the entire organisation on the initiatives and key performance indicators that support those goals. With the latest update, customers can now create and maintain large-scale scorecard applications with a fraction of the previous effort. Its new batch facility allows users to more quickly create new models and update existing ones.

"Quality is more than just business management figures," said Government Councillor Franz D"oller of Administrative Department 6 of Vienna City Administration, initiator of its balanced scorecard project. "With SAS Strategic Performance Management, we primarily want to demonstrate the high quality of our organisation and break the concept of quality down into more detail. This leads to near-term corporate culture changes and lasting change to our image."

The announcement came at SAS Forum 2007 - An Executive Conference that brings together C-level executives and a group of the world's most respected thought leaders.