SAS Institute Inc., the market leader in integrated data warehousing and decision support, and Dun & Bradstreet, the world’s leading provider of business-to-business information, today announced an enterprise procurement solution to support the strategic needs of procurement professionals worldwide.

The D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution performs a number of important functions for procurement professionals. The solution consolidates purchasing data from transaction based systems to provide information on an organisation’s total procurement spend. It also transforms complex legacy data stored in back-office procurement systems into information that provides a clear and immediate strategic advantage. The information is used to support future contract negotiations, leverage volume pricing and, importantly, to identify vendor relationships in need of special attention. The solution combines information warehousing, data mining, and OLAP/decision support to create a full function business application using D&B business information and actual customer data.

The financial impact of implementing solutions such as the D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution typically can range from 5 percent to 10 percent of the organisation’s total purchasing expenditure, depending on the firm’s size. Because the D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution facilitates an understanding of business relationships between both customers and vendors, it also facilitates the management of supply and demand chain functions. Once in place, the solution delivers vital support to procurement professionals’ decision making processes.

"The D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution can significantly improve company profitability, specifically companies whose external purchases account for a large proportion of operating revenues," said Clare Gillan, vice president of applications research, International Data Corp. "The savings achieved from leveraged buying power coupled with risk reduction due to more effective strategic sourcing could provide a handsome ROI for those implementing this solution".

The D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution relies on the United Nations/Standard Products and Services Classification (UN/SPSC) system, already accepted by leading corporate purchasing card providers. The UN/SPSC is emerging as a global standard for classifying goods and services among corporate and government purchasers.

"The first step in any process improvement is to understand where you are at present," said Jennifer Major, SAS Institute product manager for the D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution. "Many organisations simply don’t know how much they buy, what they buy or from whom they buy. The need, then, is an open information warehouse and decision support based hierarchical numbering system that allows identification for either a broad product group or a specific classification."

Features and Benefits

The D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution is unsurpassed as a comprehensive procurement-decision support system and incorporates the following:

• D&B data which, when combined with a customer’s existing vendor records, provides a cleansed and fortified decision support tool.

• Seamless information warehouse based access to diverse data sources on disparate platforms; it can either incorporate historical legacy data or import data from ERP systems.

• Supported by the global combination of strength of world class providers of data – D&B and SAS Institute business solutions.

• Via SAS Institute, it is the first enterprise procurement solution from a data warehousing supplier to integrate the new world standard UN/SPSC global product classification system.

Managing the purchasing process helps companies to identify new vendors that offer the lowest amount of risk, the best price and the required level of quality and service. The D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution relies on data rationalisation - a step that helps bring about increased efficiencies in sales transactions through improved financial systems integration. The data rationalisation process allows companies to implement a common classification system for the products and services they buy to more effectively manage their corporate purchases and expenditures.

"The UN/SPSC leverages D&B’s experience of providing information-based decision support tools to help companies make the most informed business decisions," comments Frank Fitzsimmons, senior vice president global marketing at D&B. "This solution is an important step in establishing the D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution and UN/SPSC classification system as the global standard for identifying the optimum suppliers, goods and services."

The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation

Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), a company of The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (NYSE:DNB), is the world’s leading provider of business-to-business credit, marketing and purchasing information and receivable management services. Companies of all sizes in all industries around the world use D&B information in their supply and demand chains. By integrating D&B information into business systems and processes, companies can better manage their customers and suppliers and achieve a direct and seamless link between back-office and front office operations. The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, which also includes Moody’s Investors Service, is headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J. and employs approximately 12,500 people in 37 countries with reported 1998 revenue from continuing operations of $1.93 billion. Additional information about Dun & Bradstreet is available through its website,

www.dnb.com.