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SAS to buy ABC Technologies
Friday, March 08 2002
by Paula Mythen


SAS Institute Inc., the world's largest private software company, is to acquire
Oregon-based ABC Technologies.









ABC, also a private firm, is a provider of activity-based analytic management
software. The deal will be completed following approval from ABC shareholders and
certain other conditions but financial details were not disclosed by either
firm.

 

The purchase follows an 18-month collaboration between SAS and ABC Technologies
on XML-based standard for scorecarding applications. 

 

No jobs losses will result from the acquisition, as all 225 ABC Technologies
employees will be offered jobs with SAS. As part of the deal, SAS will also
acquire the knowledge portal BetterManagement.com. After closing the transaction,
ABC Technologies will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SAS and Chris M.
Pieper, chief executive officer of ABC Technologies, will take the helm as
president of SAS' Active Performance Management program. 

 

"Last year we announced a strategy to acquire technology that complements our
solutions," said Dr. Jim Goodnight, SAS' president and chief executive. "I've
long been impressed by ABC Technologies and its dedication to solutions in the
performance management space. By integrating the ABC team into SAS, we will
become bigger and better."

 

Activity-based costing, the main business of ABC, is used to break down the costs
of specific business processes and activities, an essential step in determining
the profitability of certain products and services. SAS will build ABC's
activity-based analysis software components into its customer-relationship
management, financial, and human-resource analytical applications. 

 

The major advantage for SAS was the ability to take on technology that is
complementary to its existing Strategic Performance Management suite and to be
able to get the ABC capabilities to market much faster than it could possible
develop it.

 

"Our combined solution will provide our customers with a breadth of
applications that other vendors in the space can't match," said Goodnight.
Indeed the technology fit between the two companies is thought to be so close
that there is expected to be very little in the way of written-off assets.

 

Although ABC Technologies is highly successful in its own right with revenues
totalling USD32 million in 2001, its market is very concentrated.  The company
has offices in 15 countries and has more than 4,300 software installations in 73
countries with a wide range of customers from manufacturing, services, consumer
goods and the public sector.  

 

SAS employs around 20 people in Ireland and its customers here include AIB Bank,
Bank of Ireland and the Revenue Commissioners. SAS has over 8,500 employees
globally and revenues in 2000 of over USD1billion.