SAS institute

Jim Goodnight, the company’s CEO believes the industry is moving too fast and admits that he is not much of a visionary as Bill Gates. He’s uncertain where the organization is heading towards in the future.

In an effort to understand the request of their customers, the company distributes ballots to at the end of each year asking them what features they would like to see in upcoming projects. This company is definitely attentive and responsive to their feedback. They have adopted “give them the software they want” attitude with a logically system of “there’s no reason to develop software they don’t want,” which reassures that their clients come first with an exceptionally high level of service

In addition to its courteous service to customers, the company is also considerate of their customers financially. The SAS Institute’s business model is unique in that rather than selling a product and upgrading the service several years later and require the product to be purchased again, they provide an annual licensing arrangement with free upgrades. This tells me that the organization is truly concerned with the satisfaction of their customers and not just for profit.

The SAS Institute has no single competitor in their unique design of software. In segments of their business it competes with companies that create statistical analysis packages such as SPSS, a software I often times use in my doctoral program to analyze data in my research projects. It’s nice to see that although competition isn’t a factor this company needs to consider, it however still continues to improve their associations with customers and validates the company’s high morals.

The company treats their employees just as well as their customers. In class we’ve discussed that employees are on the front line dealing with the customers and representing the company on a daily basis. It would seem relevant to make sure your employees are satisfied with their jobs in order to transfer that satisfaction when working with clienteles. The SAS institute follows four distinct principles: 1. Treat people well and things will take care of themselves (the trickle-down effect), 2. Intrinsic motivation – emphasize on coaching and mentoring rather than monitoring and controlling, 3. A long term perspective is required of all issues, and 4. Bottom-up decision making with no specific financial goal.

It’s just amazing to me how so many companies are unable to abide by principle two. They expect employees to be able to perform to a certain satisfactory level set by management (in which that set level has absolutely no merit what-so-ever and is invalid), but fails to provide the necessary guidance to ensure employees will reach that point. Frustration then ensues due to the lack of direction and eventually leads to job dissatisfaction.

The fourth principal is one that is very important, but isn’t very popular within most organizations. Financial revenue and growth is key to most companies, but it’s remarkable to see the difference in the business dynamic when the focus of business isn’t concentrated on “making more money.” That’s what distinguishes SAS from other business that money doesn’t comprise everything.