SAS Activity-Based Management is a powerful tool designed to improve cost management and performance analysis by offering detailed insights into business processes and resource allocation.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| SAS Activity-Based Management | 2.5% |
| Anaplan | 6.5% |
| Adaptive Insights | 4.9% |
| Other | 86.1% |
With its precision in identifying cost drivers and process inefficiencies, SAS Activity-Based Management helps organizations streamline operations by providing clear visibility into resource utilization. It enables informed decision-making across multiple sectors by leveraging data-driven insights, ultimately enhancing productivity and profitability.
What are the key features of SAS Activity-Based Management?In manufacturing, SAS Activity-Based Management helps track production costs, leading to reduced wastage. Healthcare providers use it to allocate medical resources efficiently, ensuring better patient outcomes. In finance, it aids in cost transparency, helping institutions manage expenditures wisely.
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| CEO at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees | 2.0 | This solution helps me compare production costs, but its data integration is complex, visualization is poor, and setup was difficult. Technical support is low, and I recommend CostPerform instead. |
| Data Scientist at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees | 1.5 | I found this software useful for specific accounting projects, helping clarify true costs. But, its poor interface, difficult installation, and limited vendor support make it challenging, requiring substantial IT resources to deploy. |
| Optimization Consultant with 1,001-5,000 employees | 3.0 | I value its complex Activity Based Cost calculation ability. However, usability is poor, with illogical constraints and stability issues like reboots. We're considering programming its calculation function into SQL Server. |
| Manager with 1,001-5,000 employees | 2.5 | I find cube generation valuable, but this solution needs simplification and transparency as it often feels like a black box. I've experienced stability and scalability issues, although customer and technical support are good. |
| Performance Management/VP at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees | 3.5 | I found SAS ABM/EG valuable for expense allocation and ETL, appreciating its traceability. However, I experienced performance issues with large data, IT security conflicts, and miss the OLAP drilling feature. Customer service was mixed. |
Helps to compare production costs across different departments.
We have been using this solution for three years.
I would rate the level of technical support as very low.
We did not use a different solution before this one.
The initial setup was very complex. The software installation needed several days.
Try Cost Perform from QPR. It is a better tool. We weren’t aware of the existence of CostPerform during the tender.
The product is designed for very specific accounting based projects such as cost allocation and maybe transfer pricing.
The product helped determine the organization's true cost of providing its products and services to customers.
The interface is poorly designed and could really use an improvement to compete with other comparable software.
I've been using it for three months.
There were problems because the installation was extremely difficult and there was a lack of support from the vendor.
User role role based access is required to operate the software. This causes some instability when working on projects.
No issues encountered.
SAS has generally pretty good service. However, for this specific software there didn't seem to be a lot of resources dedicated to supporting it..
Technical Support:SAS has generally pretty good service. However, for this specific software there didn't seem to be a lot of resources dedicated to supporting it..
The original software was owned by another company, and SAS acquired them. There was some level of backward compatibility but it wasn't that smooth of a transition.
It's very complex so the software needs IT support to install. Mid-tier servers with role-based access are required to connect the users to the actual server.
It was an in-house implementation.
Fortunately, the software did not cost us much as we were able to be obtained through a software bundled agreement.
It cost a lot of in-house resources to get this product to work. The software itself was not very expensive through the agreement we had with the vendor.
No because legacy models were created in this system, we had to use it. There are a wide range of other options in data analytics that could provide similar capabilities.
Only implement this product for very specific purposes, if you need very complex scalable accounting projects. You need an IT support team to deploy and maintain this software.
The calculation ability because when you make Activity Based cost models, you need to be able to calculate the distributed cost for each activity. The model consists of several layers and ABM is able to calculate how costs are split and added.
This task is too advanced for Excel and it needs a specific system. We have used ABM to make the calculations for us, but we extract the data and present it using cubes on an MS analysis server.
The product allows us to calculate the distributed cost across activities
The usability needs to be improved but bear in mind that we did not have the latest update. Changes in the model were not easy through ABM as some user constraints were not logical. For example, the default layout couldn't be changed, so each user had to switch the layout whenever they opened a model.
The company have used it for 10 years of which I have been working with it for 4 years.
It seems like the cache is not emptied, so eventually the system needs a reboot.
We had SAS Institute assist with the implementation.
Consider self development. Also, as we only use ABM for calculating distributed costs, we are considering programming that part into the SQL server.
Cube generation is a valuable feature.
It could be made much more simpler. Most of the time it looks like a black box for developers.
Two years.
Yes there are some issues.
Yes there are some issues.
Good.
Technical Support:Good.
Not in the past, but I currently have an alternate solution.
Originally I heard that it is the best product in the market in its segment, but this tool can be further improved to make it simpler.
SAS Activity Based Management (ABM):
SAS EG (Enterprise Guide): allow users to build query and perform ETL without the need to write SQL codes. Very useful software if the user has been trained well to use the software.
ABM:
EG has helped to handle huge database ETL which definitely improve efficiency.
I am hoping the 'drilling with graph function' (as mentioned in above) can be brought back in the updated version.
I've been using ABM alongside EG (I would rate it as 7.5/10) from 2006 to 20114 (about eight years) but I have been using it less frequently since 2011 due a to a change in job scope.
The organisation that I work for is a financial institution and hence has very tight IT security policy. We encountered issues once in a while after the security patches are run (to tighten the security) and it requires support from the vendor to come in and work with our IT department to resolve it. I think it is better to have dedicated IT support personnel in the organisation (rather than support by general IT staff) as ABM is rather a unique product and the maintenance (i.e the setup of new user) requires special procedures.
We used to encounter performance issues when running huge database or extracting huge database from OLAP. I am not sure whether it has been resolved.
We experienced severe performance issues when the models created are getting more details and becoming more complex. The 'calculation' task takes a long time to run and sometimes the job just 'died' at the server. However, it should be resolved by ensuring to allocate good capacity to house the ABM software, especially if you want to create a few models and running/refresh them at about the same time (reporting period).
I would give a rating of 6/10 as some of the questions/issues we posted are still not resolved (especially since we upgraded SAS ABM to version 6.4).
Technical Support:Local technical support is good and I would give a rating of 7/10.
I am not sure about the setup cost but our annual maintenance fee is around Malaysian Ringgit 10k (charges based on number of users).
I can't give much advice on the implementation of this product because I was not involved during that stage. However, I think extensive UAT and training should be the crucial part to ensure smooth transition and maximize usage by users. It can be difficult and confusing to use the OLAP drilling function but it is very useful if user able to gain an understanding on it.
Another point is to ensure allocation of good capacity server to host this software if the data involved is huge, else performance will be an issue.
