Financial Solutions that Start at SAS

by David Davis

Global companies such as SAS, and perhaps your own, face a wide range of complexities when it comes to budgetary planning, monitoring and reporting finances in different currencies. The differences sometimes make it difficult to assemble all the pieces needed to gain a single version of the financial truth.

As corporate controller for SAS Worldwide Finance, I feel fortunate that our team has a powerful helper in SAS Financial Management Solutions. And as we work with SAS’ R&D team to develop and further fine-tune this solution suite, the developers can then take the lessons learned and best practices and apply them to you, our customers.

At SAS, we use SAS Financial Management Solutions because it enables the local finance departments and regions to not only report the numbers in a consolidated fashion, but to bring the EMEA, Asia/Pacific, Americas and Worldwide Corporate Finance groups closer together. We function more as a global team because of SAS Financial Management Solutions.

Comprising two components – SAS Planning and SAS Consolidation and Reporting – SAS Financial Management Solutions help us and our customers effectively plan, analyze and report on organizational performance, driving strategic business decisions and managing financial risk.

SAS Financial Management Solutions allow us to perform extensive internal and external benchmarking of the operations and offices across all regions, functions and currencies, looking beyond typical financial measures to include key performance indicators such as sales efficiency and other productivity measures. Company management can examine cause-and-effect relationships to determine why one office may be outperforming another, or why one region may be having greater success selling a given SAS solution. We can also bring together a consolidated view of operations such as R&D work being done on a global basis. The software also manages and analyzes foreign currency conversions and verifies data integrity for each reporting entity. In short, SAS Financial Management Solutions give us one version of the truth for SAS finances.