Penton's Business Finance Magazine and SAS Announce Winners of 2007 Vision Awards

Business Wire, Oct 10, 2007

NEW YORK -- Penton Media's Business Finance([R]) magazine and SAS today announced the winners of the 2007 Vision Awards, recognizing excellence in business performance management. The winners are the American Red Cross (Cleveland); BNSF Railway (Fort Worth, Texas); and Kansas City Southern (Kansas City, Mo.) This year's winners will be honored at the Business Performance Management Summit, November 12 and 13, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency in Old Greenwich, Conn.

Now in their 11th year, the Vision Awards are the only awards developed specifically to recognize business performance management (BPM), which includes strategic planning, business planning and budgeting, performance measurement and business and financial reporting. In addition to having demonstrated excellence in these processes, the award winners have established organizational cultures that support and reinforce best practices in business performance management.

"This year's Vision Award winners have taken time-consuming, manual processes and transformed them, not only cutting costs but also facilitating better decision-making," said Matt Weiner, group publisher for Business Finance. "BNSF, Kansas City Southern, and American Red Cross have used performance management to align their strategic and operational plans by measuring, monitoring and optimizing key business drivers. They represent classic cases of how, when done right, performance management can create tangible value and competitive advantage for organizations."

The Vision Awards finalists, by annual revenue category, were:

Greater than $5 Billion
BNSF Railway Company, Fort Worth, Texas (Winner)
Sara Lee, Downers Grove, Ill.

$501 million to $5 Billion
Kansas City Southern, Kansas City, Mo. (Winner)
Monster Worldwide, New York
Zimmer Holdings, Warsaw, Ind.

Under $500 Million
American Red Cross (Cleveland Chapter), Cleveland (Winner)
Ocean Nutrition Canada, Dartmouth Canada
TV Guide.com, New York

In addition to providing a forum for the Vision Award winners and their case studies, the BPM Summit will bring together leading performance management practitioners to help participating executives and their organizations achieve maximum value from BPM systems and processes. Sponsored by SAS and other leading BPM vendors and consultancies, the BPM Summit agenda and registration information are available at http://www.bpmmag.net/summit.>

About Business Finance Magazine

Penton's Business Finance is a business magazine that reveals and examines best practices for finance executives -- CEOs, CFOs, COOs, treasurers, finance directors, etc. Its purpose is to help them do their jobs and make better purchasing decisions. Editorially, Business Finance emphasizes content that anticipates important trends and quantifies their potential impact to its subscribers. Major areas of coverage include performance management, corporate finance, treasury and cash management and technology management. For more information or to subscribe to Business Finance, visit http://www.bfmag.com/subscribe.> Penton Media, Inc. is the largest independent business-to-business media company in the U.S., serving more than six million business professionals every month. The company's market-leading brands are focused on 30 industries and include 113 trade magazines, 145 Web sites, 150 industry trade shows and conferences, and more than 500 information data products. Headquartered in New York City, the privately held company is owned by MidOcean Partners and U.S. Equity Partners II, an investment fund sponsored by Wasserstein & Co., LP, and its coinvestors. For additional information on the company and its businesses, visit www.penton.com.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services. Customers at 43,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight from data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products and processes. Only SAS offers leading data integration, storage, analytics and 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.