Category: Computer Hardware

SAS® Gives Orange County Dept. of Education Clear View of Finance and Operations

OCDE will be able to integrate and analyze data

CARY, N.C. (June 07, 2012) – Serving more than 500,000 students, California’s Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) will use SAS Business Intelligence and SAS Financial Management to improve budgeting, planning and forecasting for 28 school districts, four community college districts and four regional occupational programs. OCDE will be able to integrate and analyze financial, payroll, human resources, student and other data to better understand operations and costs.

Many disparate data sources have made it difficult for OCDE to get a clear view of operations in the past. “Historically, data living in silos has made it challenging to see the total picture,” said Louis Mazzarini, OCDE Director of Information Technology. “SAS brings experience at breaking down those silos, and that is important for OCDE.”

OCDE has broad responsibilities and requires technology that can capture and analyze all relevant data. With more than 1,400 full- and part-time employees, OCDE is also charged with providing cost-effective, centralized services. SAS Business Intelligence will integrate data from the districts and provide self-service reporting and analysis. Decision makers at the districts will spend less time looking for answers and more time driving strategic decisions. Using SAS Financial Management to consolidate planning and historical information on demand, OCDE will deliver the latest information to decision makers and regulatory agencies.

With more than 3,000 K-12 and higher education customers in more than 100 countries, and education specialists on six continents, SAS serves the education industry by delivering software solutions, strategic services and academic programs that spark innovation and expand educational opportunities.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 55,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright

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SAS customers share enrollment management, institutional research successes at AIR forum

Business intelligence supports degree tracking, student success, early warning systems

CARY, N.C. (May 23, 2011) – Student enrollment and retention are the lifeblood of higher education institutions. Ensuring those students earn degrees in an appropriate timeframe keeps it flowing. Two customers discuss how they use SAS® software for institutional research to tackle these critical challenges at this week’s Association for Institutional Research (AIR) annual forum in Toronto.

In separate presentations, university representatives will discuss how implementing a reporting data warehouse has expanded reporting capabilities, through UCF’s use of the SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Suite for Education. Supported by SAS Business Intelligence and SAS Data Management servers, a UCF information delivery portal provides secure, campus wide access to multi-dimensional, detailed enrollment reports on current and historical enrollment trends.

Demonstrating institutional and student success requires degree data. How many were awarded, the breakdown by college or department, the diversity of degree recipients, number of minors or certificates awarded, etc. In the second presentation, members of UCF’s Institutional Knowledge Management office will show how they converted legacy, static degree data into a graphic-based, trend-focused degree application that answers these critical questions and more.

Institutional research and technology experts from Western Kentucky University will present their Kentucky AIR Best Paper award winner on the university’s early-warning system for enrollment, persistence and student success. In a separate presentation, they will share best practices and lessons learned before, throughout and after last year’s successful launch of a business intelligence portal.

“These two universities are mastering the use of data to help meet their most important missions: enroll quality students and ensure their success,” said Armistead Sapp, head of the SAS Education Practice. “We’ve learned so much working with UCF and WKU over the years. Session attendees will not be disappointed.”

In addition, a SAS analytics expert will discuss supporting institutional research through analytics, including how to seamlessly integrate data across multiple platforms, provide insightful reporting and utilize the power of analytics. Attendees will learn how data can be surfaced in dashboards with drillable reports, and how analytics can predict trends, enabling proactive decision making.

With more than 3,000 college, university and business school customers in 126 countries and education specialists on every continent, SAS serves higher education by delivering software solutions, strategic services and academic programs that spark innovation and expand educational opportunities.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 50,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright

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SAS® Business Intelligence Made Easy for Business Professionals

Top Email Client Joins Other SAS Query-and-Reporting Interfaces, Improves Outlook for Better Decisions

CARY, N.C. (October 25, 2010) – As business intelligence applications spread throughout enterprises of all sizes, business analytics leader SAS is extending the power of query and reporting within Microsoft Outlook, the world’s most widely used email package.

SAS offers Microsoft Office integration in SAS BI Server and SAS Enterprise BI Server with new support for access through Outlook, ensuring a familiar, self-service interface to key information for critical decisions. Market watchers estimate that MS Outlook makes up between 37 percent and 43 percent of all e-mail clients.

“Leveraging Outlook is a great way to make BI more pervasive, particularly for casual users, because email is more widely used than even Excel. As I discussed in a Sept. 27 “Ease of Use in BI” report, email is rated significantly easier to use than BI tools, and easier-to-use BI tools boast a 10 percent higher adoption rate than BI usage overall,” said Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard founder and author of Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App.

“The enhancement to SAS Microsoft Office integration takes the integration of BI and e-mail to a new level, with the e-mail client used as a navigation tool to access all reports and dashboards. Folders on the SAS BI Server automatically appear as folders in Outlook. From within Outlook, users can view, refresh or send a report to another person,” said Howson. “This will make it much easier to increase BI adoption.”

SAS Business Intelligence lets less technical users immediately access data, modify data requests and display information visually. Those business professionals may use SAS BI through Sharepoint, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. They can choose from a library of predefined but customizable templates or design their own. Users gain insight, investigate patterns and discover previously hidden facts through visual queries.

“There is no substitute for timely, detailed reports to best manage the business,” said Bobby Hull, Systems Analyst at BGF Industries. “We can’t lock up information in a back office

Query and reporting are key components of the SAS Business Analytics Framework

The SAS Business Analytics Framework includes industry and line-of-business solutions, as well as analytic, data management, query and reporting technologies. Companies can address the most critical business issues immediately and then add new functions over time, enabling continuous performance improvement.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright

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