ACCT401: As the leading AI and advanced analytics platform, SAS continues to innovate relentlessly. We’ve aligned our company: Strategic Management Accounting Assignment, SMU, Singapore

As the leading AI and advanced analytics platform, SAS continues to innovate relentlessly. We’ve aligned our company with one common goal: to help customers realize the full potential of their AI and analytics investments. This commitment has supported the profitability, stability, and growth of the company for decades.

More than 83,000 organizations rely on SAS to help them make better decisions. The year 2019 represented a significant transformation for SAS, driven by a transition to cloud-based technology and related pricing strategy, as well as financial accounting changes.

SAS began adjusting its pricing strategy to smooth multi-year revenue pricing more evenly over contract periods, which is consistent with cloud pricing across the industry. SAS also adopted the new accounting standard for reporting revenue referred to as ASC 606 which changed the timing of when revenue is recorded.

As a result, SAS revenue in 2019 was relatively flat, growing by .5% in constant currency. In USD, SAS revenue was $3.1 billion, reflecting accounting and pricing changes, as well as the impact of exchange rate changes.

Initiatives SAS targeted for investment performed very well. SAS experienced double-digit revenue gains in AI software and solutions for IoT, risk management, and fraud and security intelligence. Cloud revenue rose as well, reflecting customers’ appetite for cloud-ready solutions like SAS Customer Intelligence 360 and SAS Viya to modernize their analytics environments.

In 2019, we committed to investing $1 billion in AI innovation over three years. That investment continues to pay off as customers realize the benefit of innovation, education, and services to optimize ROI on AI projects.

We’ve also expanded our channel program to give customers the full power of our partner network. In 2019, SAS partners influenced 56% of new sales and half of our top 50 deals. Analytics remains a hot industry, and we’re redoubling our efforts to remain the undisputed leader in this space.

We continue to reinvest an average of 25% of revenue back into R&D – double the average of large technology companies – to create innovative products, improve customer experience, and help our customers digitally transform to meet the needs of tomorrow. Everything we do at SAS is designed to help organizations transform to make better decisions. Innovation is our north star, and we constantly strive to deliver better for you.