SAS Institute and D&B Announce Solution To Facilitate Strategic Purchasing Decisions

Unifying warehouse and decision support data saves purchasing dollars

SAS Institute Inc., the market leader in integrated data warehousing and decision support, and D&B (NYSE: DNB), the world's leading provider of business-to-business information, have developed an enterprise procurement solution to support the strategic needs of procurement professionals worldwide.

Unique Features and Benefits
The D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution is unsurpassed as a comprehensive procurement-decision support system and incorporates the following:

• D&B data which, when combined with a customer's existing vendor records, provides a cleansed and fortified decision support tool.
• Seamless information warehouse-based access to diverse data sources on disparate platforms; it can either incorporate historical legacy data or import data from ERP systems.
• Supported by the global combination of strength of world class providers of data - D&B and SAS Institute business solutions.
• Via SAS Institute, it is the first enterprise procurement solution from a data warehousing supplier to integrate the new world standard UN/SPSC global product classification system. The UN/SPSC is emerging as a global standard for classifying goods and services among corporate and government purchasers

Managing the purchasing process helps companies to identify new vendors that offer the lowest amount of risk, the best price and the required level of quality and service. The D&B and SAS enterprise procurement solution relies on data rationalization -- a step that helps bring about increased efficiencies in sales transactions through improved financial systems integration. The data rationalization process allows companies to implement a common classification system for the products and services they buy to more effectively manage their corporate purchases and expenditures.