In the wake of a series of shocks which have rocked financial markets in the recent past - Worldcom, Xerox and, closer to home, Absa'sUniFer subsidiary, Saambou and Siltek - investors and regulators around the globe are calling for increased financial transparency.
Stringent corporate governance and executive accountability, they say, is needed to regain market confidence and stimulate the economy.
In SA, for example, the final King Report on Corporate Governance 2002 ("King II") which was released earlier this year, places considerable emphasis on corporate governance and accountability. And earlier this month, President George Bush called for a new ethic of responsibility in America's corporate community and unveiled tough new criminal penalties and enforcement provisions to punish those who threaten to undermine the integrity of the US's financial markets
SAS, the leader in business intelligence software, has responded with software to assist businesses in this regard.
Its latest version of SAS Financial Management Solutions (FMS) does more than enable financial transparency. Its multidimensional reporting and forecasting capabilities enable organisations to know the state of their financial health at any given moment.
Bill Hoggarth, managing director of SAS Institute SA, says SAS's quality data analysis and consistency enables CFOs and their departments to obtain a complete and accurate view of their organisation's financial performance from an historical and current perspective.
"More importantly, perhaps, is SAS FMS's ability to provide a future perspective as well. This means organisations can use the information which is generally hidden in the masses of financial data to predict future financial behaviour.
"By highlighting anomalies, it can give executives an early warning of where things might be going wrong and significantly reduce the chance of nasty financial surprises occurring," he explains.
"Businesses are under increased scrutiny from government and shareholders to prove their financial stability. With SAS's financial management solutions, any company can have the confidence to face the market knowing its data is accurate and reliable and it can make sound business decisions based on that data."
SAS Financial Management Solutions 3.2
* Enhanced business planning - Planning and budgeting is completely integrated - eliminating redundant data, providing a consistent experience for all users throughout the organisation. Management planning allows automated notification regarding process performance, keeping tabs on important issues such as data integrity.
* Rapid consolidation- SAS Consolidation and Reporting optimises efficiency and ease of use by taking advantage of the SAS Intelligence Architecture - the open, end-to-end core of all SAS analytic applications.
* Flexible cost management- Users can now choose between traditional cost allocations or more complex activity-based costing methods as a result of the integration of ABC Technologies. Benefits include: a. Automate labour-intensive processes; b. Perform profitability analysis; and c. "What if" scenario modelling.
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SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 38 000 sites - including 99 of Fortune 100 businesses - to develop more profitable relationships with their customers and suppliers, to make better, more accurate and informed decisions, and to drive their organisations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics, and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know. For more information, visit www.sas.com.
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