SAS Introduces Direct Access to PeopleSoft ERP Data

SAS Institute, a market leader in integrated data warehousing and e-intelligence, announced the availability of SAS/Access to PeopleSoft, as part of Release 8.2 of the SAS System. SAS adds to its array of data access products and ERP access solutions by adding the capability to read PeopleSoft information directly.

"This adds another data access component to SAS' comprehensive suite of data access tools," said Michael Schiff, vice president of E-business and Business Intelligence, at Current Analysis. "It is another example of SAS' ability to integrate data from multiple heterogeneous sources and deliver it to users for their decision support activities."

"Many customers already invested in PeopleSoft's HR and Financial systems can now leverage that investment to the fullest using SAS software," said Frank Nauta, SAS' worldwide program manager of data warehousing solutions. "This product lets you easily navigate the structure of the PeopleSoft system, enabling you to identify, surface and organize the PeopleSoft data you need, without being a PeopleSoft expert. With the SAS data warehousing architecture, you can seamlessly integrate PeopleSoft data with all other data sources, such as transaction systems and legacy information."

Ryan Cherland, director - university management information at the University of Kansas, tested a beta release of SAS/Access to PeopleSoft. "SAS/Access to PeopleSoft gave us a GUI interface to easily create the SQL extraction code for more than 20 tables in under one hour," said Cherland. "But more importantly, the metadata extracted by SAS/Access to PeopleSoft allowed us to develop a macro to compare and examine data records in those tables."

Analysis showed that the PeopleSoft Financials conversion (Version 6.1 to 7.5) changed the fiscal year values of thousands of budget journal records. "Fiscal year is a crucial classification value in our reporting systems, and we were just one week away from cutting over to Version 7.5. Because SAS/Access to PeopleSoft helped identify the problem, we were able to correct the fiscal year values within our SAS extraction process -- and implement both PeopleSoft Financials and our SAS Web-based financials reporting system as scheduled," said Cherland.

In many companies, hundreds of legacy subsystems retire when an ERP system is installed. "However, because ERP systems do not support decision-support systems directly, the need to source a data warehouse from the ERP system is obvious," said Nauta. "Yet the crucial distinction between building data warehouses sourced from ERP and pre-ERP legacy systems is nearly always ignored. The good news is that the task of constructing a data warehouse on top of an ERP system will become easier with this new set of tools."

"SAS can greatly facilitate the data integration process, as over its 25 plus years of existence it has developed the ability to access a wide variety of relational and legacy data sources and ERP application systems," added Current Analysis' Schiff. "SAS/Access to PeopleSoft is a logical extension of this capability and should certainly benefit PeopleSoft users seeking to take advantage of SAS' rich data warehousing and business intelligence capabilities."

About SAS

SAS is a world leader in e-intelligence software and services, enabling its customers to turn raw data -- including the vast quantity generated by e-business -- into usable knowledge. Software from SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, is used at more than 35,000 business, government and university sites in 110 countries.

Contact SAS Institute, Wally Maczka, 919-531-5350, Wally.Maczka@sas.com, www.sas.com/newsroom.