Using a Complete SAS Data Warehousing Solution to Access In-depth, Timely Information, Goodyear Rolls Ahead in The 1997 Best Practice Awards

Business Wire, Oct 27, 1997

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 1997--SAS Institute Inc. announced today that its customer, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, was recognized in the 1997 Best Practice Awards in the category of "Business Process Improvement" for their Business Unit Diagnostic System (BUDS). The awards, sponsored by Technology Managers Forum International and PC Week, were presented Oct. 22 at Technology Forum `97 in New York City.

Using SAS Institute's end-to-end data warehousing solution, BUDS pulls information from various operational systems and delivers a visual data presentation, allowing users to determine business performance at the store, district, region, or company level immediately.

"Before BUDS, our retail organization was not getting the information it needed to support the business," says Keith Smith, manager of business information and computer services at Goodyear. "Now with our SAS data warehouse we can quickly and easily identify problem areas in our retail stores and spend our time addressing those problems."

The Best Practice Awards is an annual program that recognizes quality achievements in technology management that provide competitive advantage to companies. The term 'Best Practice' denotes a standard of excellence that has been achieved within an organization and refers to a process that can be quantified, adapted, and repeated.

Judges for the Business Process Improvement category included Beth Daly, vice president of development, General Reinsurance Corp.; Ian Grant, manager of network services, Standard and Poor's Rating Services; and Jenene Karamon, vice president of systems development practices, Merrill Lynch.

With annual revenues of more than $13 billion (U.S.), Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is well known for its high-quality products and services. Goodyear operates tire manufacturing plants in 27 countries, as well as tire and auto service centers and other distribution facilities around the world.

Now in its 21st year, SAS Institute is one of the top ten largest independent software vendors in the world, and is the largest privately held software company. The leading provider of data warehousing and decision-support software, the Institute has won the reader-selected 1996 and 1997 Datamation magazine Data Warehousing Product of the Year award and Software Magazine's Editor's Choice award for decision-support software.

SAS Institute provides an integrated suite of information delivery tools that allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organization into information that business users need to make decisions. To make data useful, SAS software collects data from almost every platform and data format; cleans and transforms data into information that users will understand; and stores that information in an open and efficient data warehouse structure.

To explore that information, SAS software includes OLAP, query and reporting, EIS, data mining, analysis, data visualization, and application-development interfaces. SAS software is client/server and Web enabled. SAS Institute also delivers business solutions for financial consolidation and reporting, clinical trials analysis, oil and gas analysis and IT service management. Currently, SAS software and business solutions are being used at more than 30,000 business, government, and university sites in more than 120 countries.

Please visit SAS Institute's Web site: www.sas.com SAS is a registered trademark of SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All other tradenames referenced are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: SAS Institute Inc.

Angela Padgett or Pamela Meek, 919/677-8000

www.sas.com