SAS ABM now lives inside a larger platform. Your costing model does not have to.
In short. If your team runs SAS Activity-Based Management and is weighing its next step, this guide maps a calm path. SAS still lists the product in its support index; what it does state is that SAS Cost and Profitability Management on the SAS Viya platform is delivered as part of the SAS Intelligent Performance Management offering and is no longer available as a standalone product. Your next renewal is therefore a platform decision as much as a costing one. Teams that ran ABM for years hold something valuable: a mature activity model of their business. Migration done well preserves that knowledge and upgrades the machinery to time-driven costing. Done badly, it re-implements 2005. Here is the calm path.
A note on tone: SAS ABM served its users for a long time, and many of the best-built ABC models we have ever seen live in it. Nothing here disparages the product, and we make no claim that SAS has announced an end of life for it. What we say about how it is sold comes from SAS's own product support page, and that is where to check the position for your licence.
What actually changes when a costing product stops being sold on its own?
Less than the rumour suggests, and more than a renewal notice shows.
What changes is the commercial footing. The costing capability now arrives inside a broader performance-management offering rather than as something you buy on its own, which turns a costing renewal into a platform conversation with a larger number attached. Confirm what that means for your own licence with SAS.
What does not change is the asset your team built inside it: the activity dictionary, the driver relationships, the account mappings, the years of institutional agreement about how the business consumes cost. That asset took years to negotiate. It fits in a spreadsheet. It is portable.
The software is mortal. The model is not, unless you leave it behind.
Should you rebuild the same model in a new tool?
This is the fork in the road, and it deserves a real decision rather than a default.
Classic ABM models are driver-and-percentage machines: activities receive cost from the ledger, drivers push it onwards. They answer well until the maintenance bill arrives: re-surveys, driver updates, module-by-module care. Many ABM installations quietly froze years ago for exactly this reason.
Time-driven ABC was developed to fix that maintenance problem. Two mechanisms replace the driver web. Capacity cost rates: cost of capacity supplied divided by practical capacity, per resource pool. Time equations: each transaction costed by a formula of its own characteristics. The result is a model that updates from operational data instead of interviews.
If your ABM model was mainly a reporting allocator, a like-for-like rebuild may serve. If leadership is asking customer, product and channel profitability questions, migration is your once-a-decade chance to answer them properly.
What does the modern stack look like?
Data in
The extracts you already produce. Transaction logs are welcome at volume: one of our production models runs on a 525,000-row shipment dataset.
Capacity model
Cost pools with practical capacity and a rate each. This is where most of your ABM activity dictionary translates directly; activities become pools or equation terms.
Time equations
The replacement for the driver web. A few dozen equations typically replace hundreds of driver assignments, which is what makes the model maintainable by a finance team rather than a support contract.
Decision surfaces
Cost-to-serve, whale curves, capacity utilisation and scenarios, refreshed on your reporting rhythm. In our stack this is CostCtrl, run by your team after handover.
How does the migration run?
Harvest the model, not the software
Export the activity dictionary, driver definitions, account mappings and the last agreed results. This is the knowledge audit, and it is urgent while the people who built the model are still in the room.
Translate to capacity and time
Activities regroup into cost pools with practical capacities; driver logic becomes time equations where causality is time-shaped, direct assignment where it is not. Expect the new model to be structurally smaller.
Parallel run one closed period
Old results beside new results, differences explained line by line. ABM veterans make this step fast because they already know where the bodies are buried; the parallel run gives them the forum to say so.
Cut over, hand over, retire with honours
The new model goes live with your team operating it. Archive the ABM outputs for audit continuity, and document the mapping from old activities to new pools so history remains readable.
WHAT MIGRATES, WHAT RETIRES
DRIVER WEB TO TIME EQUATIONS
How do the approaches compare?
| Classic ABM (as commonly implemented) | Modern TDABC stack (CostCtrl) | |
|---|---|---|
| Modelling approach | Activity dictionary with driver-based assignment | Capacity cost rates and time equations |
| Time equations | Not native; time captured via surveys and driver proxies | Native; core costing mechanism |
| Data volume | Periodic, aggregated driver tables | Transaction-level feeds, hundreds of thousands of rows |
| Implementation time | Historically multi-quarter implementations | First working model in weeks, not quarters. |
| Pricing model | Legacy licence and support terms | Subscription plus expert build; client team operates |
Fair questions.
- Is SAS ABM still supported?
- Yes, as far as SAS publishes. SAS Activity-Based Management is still listed in the SAS A - Z product support index, and the support page it points to documents 8.4M3 as the current release. We have found no end-of-life announcement and we do not imply one. What SAS does state is that SAS Cost and Profitability Management on the SAS Viya platform is delivered as part of the SAS Intelligent Performance Management offering and is no longer available as a standalone product. Verify the exact terms of your own licence with SAS; contractual arrangements differ. Our guidance holds either way: harvest the model while the team that understands it is still there.
- Can our ABM activity model be imported automatically?
- The dictionary and mappings export cleanly and accelerate step 2 substantially. Full automation is neither possible nor desirable: translation to capacity and time is a modelling decision, and it is where the upgrade happens.
- Is TDABC accepted by auditors and regulators?
- The method is published, peer-reviewed and transparent by construction: every figure traces to a rate and an equation. We co-authored a published TDABC study in healthcare, and the parallel-run period gives your auditors a documented bridge from the old model.
- How long does a migration take?
- The knowledge harvest takes days; the first working model, weeks; the parallel run, one closed period. End to end, this is typically a matter of weeks. The deadline pressure is real but the project is smaller than the one that built ABM originally.
- We also run other legacy costing tools. Same story?
- The modelling question is the same; the deadlines are not what people assume. SAP's own support note lists PCM versions 10.0, 11.2 and 11.3, and Oracle's readme for on-premises HPCM 11.2 is dated March 2020 and states Premier Support through at least 2030. We maintain a separate page for each. What repeats is not a shutdown: it is that rule-and-driver allocation engines answer a narrower question than the one boards are now asking.
Your ABM model deserves a second life.
Bring your activity dictionary to a 30-minute call and we will tell you what translates, what simplifies and what it would take.
- Reply
- Within one working day
- Who answers
- A partner, not a bot
- Commitment
- None
Notes and trademarks. This page compares approaches to cost and profitability modelling and reflects our professional opinion alongside publicly available product information, current as of mid-2026. It is commentary on fit, not a statement about the quality of any product, and not advice for a specific situation. Verify current product and support details with the vendor: SAS's own product support page is the source for everything this page states about availability. SAS and SAS ABM are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. Cost and Profitability Consulting and CostCtrl are independent and not affiliated with, authorised, sponsored or endorsed by SAS Institute Inc..
Proof
A distributor in New Zealand. €1.335M of cost-to-serve made visible, then halved, and 830 loss-making customers brought down to 295.
Read the case study →Who you would be talking to
Miguel Guimarães, Founding Partner
Cost and profitability practitioner for 25+ years. Presented the Damco cost-to-serve case at Managing for Profit (Amsterdam RAI, December 2009), on the same programme as Robert S. Kaplan.
Call +351 910 313 731
