When the official statistical body of South Africa, Statistic SA (Stats SA), needed to implement the new SAS 9 enterprise Intelligence Platform (EIP), the organisation turned to SAS Institute who assigned one of their partners Qinfo to assist. Statistic SA aims to provide the South African public, business and government with relevant and accurate statistic to inform them about the dynamics of the economy, the population and society at large. Says Ronelle Brandt, from State SA: "We have multiple data sources which need to be accessible to calculate statistics and indicators and produce the required reports. Due to the confidentially of the data, security is of critical importance in our environment." The main benefits of the new system according to Brandt include connectivity to various data sources, security and ease of use, version control, as well as integration with Microsoft Office. Working with very sensitive information, the organisation is, with effective security built in, able to ensure more easily that only specific and allowed users are able to access data sets. "We produce indicators which are important to the economy; there is simply room for error, and no room for a security breach. We are very happy with the security built into the system as it allows us to stringently control various data sets and user permissions associated with these," stresses Brandt. In addition to the above she adds that reporting is also big part of what the organisation does, and the more intuitive and professional means by which reports can be produced by the new systems has reduced time to final product dramatically for staff that needs to present reports within short time frames. "What people don't realise is the pressure that our people work under, and the limited time they have available to get the information, clean it, analyse it and then present it. Being able to automate these processes and save time is critical to us - the new systems buys us time ensure good quality," adds Brandt. Other notable benefits include the ability to centralize information across the enterprise, and the option to be able to work within and from the various Microsoft product sets including Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Looking for more information on SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform? View the Live Computerworld and SAS Information Management Webcast. View the on-demand Webcast "Focus on SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Platform." Ready to put THE POWER TO KNOW® to work for you? Contact your local SAS office or call us toll free at 1-800-727-0025 (U.S. and Canada). Contact SAS for pricing information and to learn more about our products and solutions. Sign up for one of our free e-newsletters. View the Live Computerworld and SAS Information Management Webcast.