LAS VEGAS, Nevada, Oct. 26, 2005 -- Sifting through last quarter's books to fill a multi-colored dashboard with KPIs for the CFO is a recipe for failure in today's "flat world." Web-optimized software and fiber-optic technologies have made it possible for employees to collaborate from many points around the globe and achieve competitive advantage and superior results at the speed of light.

That's why SAS, the leader in business intelligence, offers a broader and deeper vision for performance management that helps all key decision makers in an organization meet strategic objectives by providing them with superior, enterprise-wide intelligence in real time so they can make faster, more effective decisions and succeed in today's blink-and-you'll-miss-it business world.

"Performance management efforts will fail if they are set up as a one-time analysis or event to be recorded in a static scorecard, or if they evaluate the performance of individual departments or geographies in silos without taking into account the role played by each unit as part of the organization as a whole," said Jim Davis, chief marketing officer at SAS. "Performance management succeeds in driving superior performance only when it uses a continuous process to evaluate the operation of the entire organization and the roles played by all of its interconnected parts."

SAS Performance Management takes industry-specific approaches supported by domain expertise and cross-functional intelligence solutions, and then delivers results through the SAS(R)9 Enterprise Intelligence Platform, which makes information a generally-available resource and drives performance across the entire enterprise. SAS Performance Management links SAS(R) Business Solutions - such as SAS(R) Customer Intelligence and SAS(R) Financial Intelligence - with SAS(R) Industry Solutions through a common infrastructure that drives substantial improvements through better intelligence and increased collaboration. And the entire performance management process can be monitored and managed through SAS' industry-leading strategy mapping, key performance indicator (KPI) development and deployment, and scorecard reporting capabilities.

SAS takes industry-specific approach to performance management

SAS Performance Management leverages the power of industry-specific offerings that address the unique issues facing industry business leaders today. SAS(R) Industry Solutions, such as SAS(R) Drug Development and SAS Risk Management for Banking, focus on solving business problems through cutting-edge software, decades of domain expertise, and data models tuned to the specific business and information technology processes used by each industry. By doing so, SAS Performance Management provides the intelligence customers need to gain an advantage over their competition.

For example, in the retail banking industry, SAS Performance Management is specifically tailored to drive customer profitability through effective cross-sale programs that deepen customer relationships. To do so, retail banks must answer questions such as:

-- Who are our most profitable customers and what do they have in common?

-- What product mix do they use?

-- What channels do they use most often?

-- Which of our customers will become the most valuable in the future?

Most traditional costing and profitability software cannot integrate and analyze the massive volumes of data from multiple technologies and business processes all the way down to the individual account level. SAS Performance Management achieves these goals by seamlessly integrating business intelligence with performance management to analyze customer transaction histories, calculate profitability for tens or hundreds of million retail customers at the individual account level, perform multi-dimensional analysis - by customer, product mix, and channel - and then deliver customer profitability insights to the right business units at the right time.

Customers supply proof of SAS' leadership in performance management

SAS' leadership takes performance management far beyond a theoretical or intellectual exercise. Today, customers are using SAS Performance Management to achieve measurable, sustainable improvements to their enterprises. Last month, Brigham and Women's Hospital was named a winner in the "Corporate Performance Management and Balanced Scorecard" category of DM Review's 2005 World Class Solution Awards competition. Brigham and Women's Hospital executives and clinicians have been using SAS Performance Management since 2002 to drive proven results in their balanced scorecard efforts.

This honor marks the second consecutive year a customer using SAS Performance Management software has won in DM Review's World Class Solutions Awards. In 2004, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Inc. (BCBSF) was named a winner in the Analytic Applications category for its use of SAS(R) Activity-Based Management. You can read more about this award at http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/102605/news1.html.

To learn more about SAS' pioneering vision of performance management, see http://www.sas.com/solutions/pm/index.html.

Today's announcement was made at the BetterManagement LIVE Worldwide Business Conference (http://www.BetterManagement.com/LIVE), which addresses critical business management issues from around the world. BetterManagement LIVE brings together more than 1,000 attendees from the public and private sector to share insights and knowledge. More than 85 speakers in seven focused tracks represent a broad spectrum of executives, academics, consultants and financial experts.

About SAS

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 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500(R) - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations 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 nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) Indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

Copyright (C) 2005 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.

SAS Institute Inc.
Bob Chase, 919-531-4327
bob.chase@sas.com