SAS stakes claim for leadership in performance management

At SAS Forum International 2004 today, SAS executives outlined plans to become the dominant provider of performance management solutions by leveraging the breakthrough capabilities of the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform, which was unveiled on 30 March.

"The existing view of performance management that focuses on strategy, planning and finance is too narrow," said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight.

"While a focus on strategy, planning and finance provides the core of an effective performance management system, SAS goes beyond the core by providing a practical, holistic view of how every aspect of an organisation contributes to performance. Our goal is to become the dominant player and recognised leader in performance management as a result of the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform and a series of key solution launches, including SAS Activity-Based Management and SAS IT Value Management, which are integral to our expanded view of performance management."

These two solutions will join the family of solutions that span across all departments and industries, providing transparency of the data that drives organisations.

For many years, customers have recognised the value of the performance management solutions delivered by SAS. "Today, SAS Strategic Performance Management delivers over 200 indicators about the labour market, which gives us very good insight to what is happening across Slovenian workplaces," said Dr Tanja Cesen, head of performance management, Ministry for Labour, Family and Social Affairs, Slovenia.

"I am very impressed with how fast SAS was able to gather the data and produce results."

SAS 9 provides a clear perspective on performance management SAS gives organisations the power to evolve quickly by understanding all the factors that contribute to performance, such as customer behaviour, supplier spending and human capital deployment.

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"Analysts as well as our competitors in business intelligence cannot agree on how to define performance management," said Art Cooke, president of SAS International. "SAS is already out front with our vision of what performance management means and the key applications that are necessary to deliver on that vision. With SAS 9, our performance management customers will be able to tune the speed and effectiveness of all their business processes and also gain the predictive capabilities needed to provide an outlook on the likely impact of change."

"In our recent evaluation of corporate performance management (CPM) vendors, SAS was ranked as outperforming the market," said Tim Jennings, research director for Butler Group, an independent IT research and analysis organisation based in the UK. "SAS has been able to demonstrate its ability to bring robust, focused solutions to market, delivering a strong CPM solution that has both functional depth and breadth."

Activity-Based Management gives SAS the edge in performance management Available today, the latest version of SAS Activity-Based Management (http://www.sas.com/solutions/abm <http://www.sas.com/solutions/abm>) will provide compelling intelligence that no other performance management vendor can match. Optimised for the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform, the new version of SAS Activity-Based Management enables users to test performance improvement initiatives for financial and operational viability before they are implemented. With production volumes, organisational structures and resource costs in constant flux, the advanced analytics of SAS Activity-Based Management provides the intelligence to predict financial performance and manage execution. SAS Activity-Based Management integrates with existing financial and operational systems to generate cost and profitability models that support better overall decision-making and supply insightful key performance indicators (KPIs) for performance management.

As outlined by cost and performance management expert Gary Cokins in his book "Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces (To Close the Intelligence Gap)", ABM provides fact-based intelligence about customer profitability, process costs, product profitability and other key information that cannot be found through any other means. "It is no longer acceptable to not have a rational system of assigning so-called non-traceable costs to their sources of origin, whether those sources are suppliers, products, or customers," Cokins wrote.

Customers using SAS Activity-Based Management have a competitive advantage that improves performance by achieving greater profits, containing costs, and predicting costs and resource requirements accurately. "In mapping out a successful strategy for MCI to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, we concluded that it was key for us to establish a repeatable financial model that increased transparency and linkages across our operations," said John Nolan, vice-president of planning and analysis for MCI. "SAS Activity-Based Management has streamlined spreadsheets generated by different departments allowing us to make our products better and increase revenue. With activity-based management, sales leaders, engineers, IT leaders and support leaders have the fact-based intelligence they need to build transparency between departments and work on common goals."

SAS IT Value Management addresses performance management needs of IT delivered on the SAS 9 Intelligence Platform and available in the third quarter of 2004, SAS IT Value Management will demonstrate how executives can focus on a single aspect of their operations, break down informational silos and generate actionable insights into their performance.

SAS IT Value Management (http://www.sas.com/solutions/itsysmgmt) takes full advantage of the seamless integration between SAS IT Management Solutions, SAS Activity-Based Management and SAS Strategic Performance Management as it analyses data from and about all IT systems, providing a single picture of IT's business performance and value. SAS IT Value Management lets IT departments tie machine data directly to their business function. The solution measures the cost and performance of the IT organisation and the quality and financial effectiveness of IT services consumed. The SAS IT Value Management scorecard provides a clear, complete snapshot of all aspects of IT and its service performance.

The powerful, integrated solutions on the new SAS 9 Intelligence Platform and supported by nearly three decades of vertical industry expertise, are helping to redefine performance management. In May, SAS launched SAS Marketing Automation (http://www.sas.com/solutions/crm) and SAS Risk Dimensions (http://www.sas.com/solutions/riskmgmt). Additional SAS 9 solutions that will be available at the beginning of the fourth quarter include: SAS Strategic Performance Management (http://www.sas.com/solutions/spm), SAS Financial Management (http://www.sas.com/solutions/financial), and SAS Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) (http://www.sas.com/solutions/srm). SAS Human Capital Management (http://www.sas.com/solutions/hrmanagement/index.html) will be available in the first quarter of 2005.