Sas Launches New Pilot Program For Government & Academic Customers - Company Business and Marketing

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, May 8, 2000

SAS Institute, a leader in integrated data warehousing and decision support, announced the Pilot Program, a new offering designed specifically for government and academic customers.

SAS' Public Sector division, a full-service technology contractor, created the program to help these customers implement IT solutions more efficiently and effectively.

The program helps public sector customers determine in advance whether a proposed implementation will yield desired results. The goal is to demonstrate a faster return on investment. As a result of the program, customers should see milestone successes earlier and more often in the project implementation so those project goals are validated to conclusion.

The scope of the Pilot Program is extensive and will touch the local, state, federal, integrator, and academic markets. "Our new Pilot Program has energized our division," says Jeff Babcock, vice president of the Public Sector Group at SAS. "The catalyst for the program was an executive conference held last spring in Washington, D.C., where more than 100 government executives discussed technology best practices. That discussion coupled with a troubling statistic from CIO magazine that more than 70 percent of technology implementations fail to meet expected outcomes, provided the impetus. Our goal is to radically reduce that percentage."

The most difficult part of any IT project is determining how to streamline a process using existing technology, factoring in relevant issues such as operational environment, and determining what additional areas the installation might impact. The goal is to shorten the time between investment and results by testing the effectiveness of a proposed IT installation before committing massive amounts of time or money to the project. If positive results are yielded, the customer moves forward because their original premise has been validated. If not, steps and strategy can be adjusted before too much time and too many dollars are spent in an effort that may or may not produce desired outcomes.

The program has already been tested by a number of federal government customers, including the Office of Personnel Management, the US Geological Survey, and the Dept. of Defense, Health Management Systems, and others.