SAS and RSM McGladrey Deliver Financial Transparency to Midmarket Businesses

Business Wire, May 1, 2006

CARY, N.C. -- SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today announced it has partnered with RSM McGladrey, Inc., to provide midmarket commercial and public organizations with the benefits of financial domain expertise, business process consulting, and the power of SAS(R) Financial Intelligence technology. At a time when businesses need better insight into their financial operations to meet government compliancy requirements, the RSM McGladrey and SAS partnership will make it easier for customers to address their financial and reporting needs. RSM McGladrey is a leading provider of financially focused business services for the mid-market.

"This partnership will help midmarket businesses access accurate, reliable financial information that will positively impact their financial strategies," said Phil Strand, SAS General Manager of Financial Intelligence. "The combination of SAS' powerful financial software and RSM McGladrey's financial services expertise deliver a laser focus into the CFO office and finance departments, enabling our customers to better meet financial reporting, budgeting and planning requirements."

SAS Financial Management improves the accuracy, relevance and timeliness of financial plans, budgets and reports while promoting the alignment and execution of strategy. This integrated consolidation, budgeting and reporting application allows organizations to more effectively analyze and manage the true drivers of shareholder value in relation to strategy in real time. SAS Financial Management is a component of SAS Financial Intelligence, which also includes solutions for activity-based management, dashboards and scorecarding, risk management, and advanced analytics such as optimization and forecasting.

Senior executives recognize the strategic priority of financial intelligence and acknowledge that investing in the management of financial information is critical to success. According to results from a recent survey by BetterManagement.com and SAS, "(while) 81 percent of respondents believe their CFOs are trusted advisers within their organizations, only 25 percent believe their organizations' business intelligence technology supports the strategic demands of this key role."

"This partnership will allow SAS to leverage additional valuable financial knowledge within the mid-market while providing RSM McGladrey with a strong, proven financial solution, which will keep customers competitive in their markets," said Michael Miller, managing director at RSM McGladrey. "Given the myriad challenges companies face today, it is critical that they have a comprehensive system - including software and services - for ensuring compliance, efficiency, profitability and performance. It is in this way that SAS and RSM McGladrey are helping finance departments become reliable, trusted advisers for other areas of the company."

About RSM McGladrey, Inc.

RSM McGladrey is a leading provider of financially focused business services. The RSM McGladrey group of companies offers accounting, tax services, business consulting, retirement resources, employer services, corporate finance, wealth management and financial process outsourcing. RSM McGladrey serves clients' global business needs through its membership in RSM McGladrey International (an affiliation of separate and independent legal entities).

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business intelligence software and services. Customers at 40,000 sites use SAS software to manage and gain insights from vast amounts of data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products. Only SAS offers leading data integration, intelligence storage, advanced analytics and traditional business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). www.sas.com

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. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.