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SAS Institute`s Global Direction Extends Intelligent Decision Support Offerings to ERP Applications Extending business analysts' decision making reach into ERP systems SAS Institute, the world's leading developer of business intelligence solutions, has announced a world-wide initiative to provide business analysts with seamless access to enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications at CeBIT '98. The development effort is aimed at leveraging organisations' investments in ERP systems by delivering critical business information from corporate operational systems into an open, intelligent business decision-making process.20 "Business professionals need an easy solution to turn data into usable information for intelligent business decisions," said Glyn Read, director of marketing, SAS Institute UK. "Organisations need to be able to access diverse business data and use it for decision making to will support business development - meeting and exceeding customer requirements. By leveraging existing business data through activities like data warehousing, data mining, business intelligence and customer relationship management (CRM), business users can be confident that they are driving their business forward. The SAS/ERP announcement guarantees information integrity and quality throughout this process, and ensures they can produce a rapid return on their investment." "Because SAS Institute is a leader in the area of intelligent decision support, business users can be comfortable that they are choosing a reliable partner," said Wolfgang Martin, vice president of META Group (Europe) Application Delivery Strategies. He continued: "Users are picking SAS software as an integral part of their new ERP development efforts because of its strength in decision support, and because it eliminates many IT bottlenecks. SAS software's strengths complement ERP technology by exploiting information from operational systems using reliable, robust decision support and OLAP tools." Industry analysts and experts view this Intelligent Decision Support extension effort to include ERP applications as a critical step for business users. "No matter what ERP system you use, data should not be controlled by an ERP vendor," said Wayne Eckerson, analyst at the Data Warehouse Institute. "You want to use a warehouse as a lever to keep control over your data resources - to keep your systems open." "Extending the reach of SAS software to ERP vendors like SAP AG, PeopleSoft, Baan, and JD Edwards exemplifies what SASAE software does so well - going after data, wherever it is, and turning it into useful information for intelligent decision making," said Simon Ansfield, SAS Institute program manager of intelligent decision support for ERP. "As the only data warehouse vendor coming from a decision support environment, SAS Institute has over 20 years of understanding customer needs and solving complex business problems. We deliver a complete view and understanding of an organisation's data to those making corporate decisions and shaping their company's future."