29 December 2009
Forrester research names SAS 'leader in business performance solutions'

Companies are turning to business performance and analytics software to drive competitiveness, with increased pressure to deliver timely and actionable information that will help organisations in the Middle East meet their goals spurring the shift, says SAS Middle East, the leading provider of business intelligence (BI) and analytic software and services in the region. As many organisations try to scale back, they identify the importance of information access and the capacity to combine, aggregate, and integrate data to improve performance and outpace the competition. Committed to helping enterprises gain competitive advantage, SAS leverages its expertise to offer a comprehensive set of business performance offerings, making it a clear 'leader in business performance solutions' according to Forrester Research's 'Forrester Wave: Business Performance Solutions, Q4 2009' report. 

Forrester Research's report also revealed that 'planning, forecasting, financial reporting and performance measurement solutions are essential for addressing economic uncertainty. SAS solutions deliver on all core capabilities evaluated by the report: planning and budgeting; consolidation and reporting; strategy and performance; and cost and profitability analysis, together with foundational BI capabilities. As a result, SAS received the top rank for cost and profitability analysis - earning a perfect score - while also receiving the top marks in product strategy and vision in the latest Forrester Wave report.

"Today's economic scenario makes it crucial for regional companies to embrace business performance and analytics solutions that can help them identify opportunities and threats more easily than competitors, understand the implications, update strategy quickly and execute consistently across the organisation," said Carel Badenhorst, Head of Technology Practice, SAS - Middle East. "In line with this, we focus our efforts on helping our clients model, predict and optimise future scenarios so they can make fact-based decisions. The recognition by Forrester Research underlines our commitment to bringing the best business performance solutions to the region."  

SAS for Performance Management, implemented in more than 1,500 customer sites, enables organisations to organise and cleanse data as a critical first step. To help organisations improve performance, SAS' intertwined solutions include dashboards and scorecards, financial consolidation, budgeting, planning and reporting; cost and profitability analysis; human and IT capital analysis; customer and supplier intelligence; enterprise risk management; sustainability management; and advanced analytics. The solutions are built on a common, scalable platform - the SAS business analytics framework - to address the end-to-end process, and can start with a single solution and evolve at a pace that suits the customers' needs.

"SAS has sophisticated capabilities in cost and profitability, forecasting and strategy management, and it focuses on business issues well beyond the scope of finance. With leading capabilities in cost and profitability management and predictive analytics, SAS is a smart choice for sophisticated companies. The predictive technology supports complex planning and forecasting applications," concluded Paul Hamerman, Forrester Research.

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About SAS
SAS is the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services. Customers at 43,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight from data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products and processes. Only SAS offers leading data integration, storage, analytics and business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®.

For more information, please contact:
CommuniGate Middle East
PO Box 66861, Dubai, UAE
Tel: +971 4 3988134
Fax: +971 4 3988137
Email: info@communigateme.com
Website: www.communigateme.com 

© Press Release 2009