Business intelligence and performance management specialist SAS Institute has announced new upgrades to several of its performance management solutions at its SAS Forum event for C-level executives, designed to help firms improve profits and efficiency and respond more quickly to business changes.

The latest version of SAS Financial Management now includes the ability to update reports more quickly, making the decision making process smoother and faster, and to carry out data entry more efficiently, improving what-if capabilities, according to the firm.

“In the financial reporting, consolidation and budgeting areas we’ve done a lot of stuff around agility, automating the workflow to make things as seamless as possible,” explained SAS director of performance management Christoph Sporleder. “Around 70 percent of organisations are still doing their budgets in Excel and email, which is scary to an extent.”

SAS Human Capital Management enables firms to use scorecarding and predictive analytics techniques to gain a single view of the workforce and improve their HR strategies. The latest version takes the facilitation of this holistic view a step further by enabling the integration of third party with employee data held in ERP systems, which can help firms to identify gaps in the workforce more easily, said SAS.

“We’re also putting the Human Capital Management offering with planning and budgeting [capabilities] to allow for workforce budgeting,” added Sporleder.

The upgrade to SAS Strategic Performance Management, meanwhile, allows firms to carry-out predictive scorecarding on a larger scale and with greater ease than before, the firm said.

“These products and solutions represent the core of performance management, being focused on finance and planning and strategy – typically the things you think of when you think performance management,” explained Randy Guard of SAS global sales development and product marketing.

Sarah Burnett of analyst firm Butler Group commented that there are “more packages addressing specific sectors and functions like human resources and risk” coming on the market all the time, although she stressed that data quality is an essential starting point for any implementation.

“If you don’t start out with this you won’t have reliable information to base your decisions on, and as part of a performance management program you must be prepared to act on the results.”

Helena Schwenk of analyst Ovum argued that the announcement indicates SAS is trying to raise its profile in the performance management market after high profile acquisitions in that area by Business Objects, SAP and Oracle.

"The whole area of government/compliance/risk management and performance management is gaining a lot more traction as companies are looking to link strategy to execution with risk-adjusted planning," she added. "SAS brings a wealth of experience to [this area] and has the potential to become a leader here."

The product launch news came as new research by the BI giant, carried out by risk specialist Chartis Research, revealed that performance management is as big a driver of risk management system as regulatory compliance, among financial services firms.

However, only a quarter of those surveyed said they had a clearly formulated risk management strategy and timetable for implementation, with data quality and management issues the biggest barriers, said SAS.

“Data quality and management are huge issues for organisations and we are increasingly seeing people coming to us asking for help around data integration, business intelligence and analytics," commented Adam Clements of consultancy Morse. "Businesses really need an integrated enterprise wide view of all of their data, if they are to gain the intelligence they need to make effective decisions that lead to improved business performance."

SAS also announced an expansion of its partner program for VARs, systems integrators and ISVs and introduced new product bundles for its resellers to market to small and medium-sized businesses. The partner push will also be supported by a new online Demo Centre, a resource showcasing SAS solutions and providing sales support which will be run by the SAS Enterprise Excellence Centre (EEC).