Study reveals majority of companies deploy activity-based management systems: SAS

BetterManagement.com survey reveals their value as part of performance management

CARY, N.C. (Jan. 30, 2006) – Results of a recently published study demonstrate that activity-based management is flourishing as a methodology for improving performance management results. The study, “Activity-Based Costing: How Activity-Based Management is Used in the Organization,” was published at BetterManagement.com. It shows that companies have widely adopted activity-based management because it provides a more complete picture than traditional cost accounting of the profits and costs of doing business.

SAS, the leader in business intelligence, is uniquely positioned to help any business maximize customer profitability, product profitability, process improvement, and cost management.

The survey included 528 respondents from companies across a broad spectrum of industries and countries. Nine of 10 companies have implemented or are considering deploying activity-based management systems. What’s more, six in 10 respondents indicated that the output from their activity-based management systems supports performance management initiatives in their organizations.

“Most of the executives surveyed shared the view that activity-based management is crucial in effective performance management deployments,” said Songyu He, Product Marketing Manager for SAS Activity-Based Management. “SAS, a worldwide market leader in activity-based management software, agrees and has integrated its activity-based management and performance management offerings. The ultimate proof of popularity rests with the users of these solutions. In 2005, worldwide revenues from SAS Activity-Based Management jumped more than 45 percent over the prior year.”

SAS® Activity-Based Management provides the modeling flexibility that survey respondents say they are looking for. More than half of the participants in the study reported using a combination of the top-down, quantity-based assignment method and the bottom up, output-driven consumption rate method for cost assignment. One in four employs only the bottom-up approach, and one in five employs only the top-down approach. While some competitive offerings only support one cost assignment approach or the other, SAS Activity-Based Management supports either approach or a combination of the two – precisely the flexibility that 50 percent of these survey respondents indicated they require.

SAS® Activity-Based Management offers integrated data management, business modeling, reporting and analysis on a single platform, improving the likelihood of a truly successful activity-based management implementation that goes far beyond traditional accounting methods to turbo charge any enterprise’s performance management results. Fully integrated on the SAS®9 Intelligence Platform, SAS Activity-Based Management helps to optimize business performance and alignment within key organizations, including IT, finance, marketing, supply chain, customer intelligence and operations.

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 5007® – 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®.