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SAS and The Staubach Company “walk their talk"Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce “Buzz Books” event, keynoted by best-selling author Keith McFarland, focused on how to grow businessCARY, NC (May 08, 2008) – A capacity crowd at SAS world headquarters Tuesday heard that growing a company past its entrepreneurial roots, while unusual, isn’t impossible. That was the message Keith McFarland, author of best-selling book The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers brought to nearly 400 area business people. McFarland, whose book is based on a five-year study of 7,000 growth companies, found that most stay small – only one-tenth of 1 percent of companies exceed US$250 million in annual sales. Summarizing the success of the event’s co-presenters, global business intelligence leader SAS and real-estate powerhouse The Staubach Company, he said: “What impressed me about these companies is that they work hard to match what they say they believe with how they behave. They walk their talk.” SAS and The Staubach Company are among nine companies highlighted in McFarland’s book, which has hit best-seller lists of BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and most recently the Los Angeles Times. In a panel discussion after McFarland’s keynote, SAS CEO Jim Goodnight, Staubach Company Executive Chairman Roger Staubach and Staubach CEO Greg O’Brien discussed how they achieved “breakthrough” status and shared proven strategies. Goodnight offered wisdom accumulated over more than three decades at the helm of SAS, which he co-founded after receiving his PhD in statistics at N.C. State University. Playing basketball under the tutelage of a wise coach and working in his father’s hardware store, he said, shaped his views about leadership and the right way to do business. In McFarland’s book, SAS’ success is contrasted with the relatively modest growth of its analytics rival SPSS. At the event, McFarland favorably compared the SAS approach to technical support to its competitors’. SAS provides 24/7 support for critical problems as part of an annual license fee, demonstrating how SAS acts on its stated principle of ensuring customers are satisfied. “One of the secrets of our success is we do not believe in shipping software before it is ready,” Goodnight said. “Our software is thoroughly tested before it goes out.”
SAS is the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services. Customers at more than 44,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight from data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products and processes. Only SAS offers leading data integration, storage, analytics and business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world
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