Investing in Asia Pacific

Philip Beniac, SAS

In the face of increasing globalization and foreign competition, the Asia Pacific market focuses on regulatory compliance, financial transparency and customer intelligence strategies.

The need for solid information upon which to base sound business decisions is paramount. That's a global need, a need not affected by geographic borders. And while many SAS software solutions resonate with the 4 million users around the world, some business pains – and therefore software solutions – seem to be more relevant to some regions than others.

Today, in Asia Pacific, we know that companies face major challenges that will affect their competitiveness. Banks are grappling with regulatory compliance; organizations are dealing with financial transparency issues; and others are seriously evaluating their customer intelligence strategies and investments. While they consolidate their infrastructures and transactional systems, they are challenged by the factor of "time to intelligence" that will give them differentiation and the edge in their respective industries.

During the last five years, many companies invested heavily in infrastructure and in operational systems. Now these same companies are increasingly frustrated with a lack of information for decision making from the ERP systems they have implemented. What they've got is essentially a "shiny new wheel" that doesn't go anywhere. Management is now asking, "How do I leverage this investment? What do I get out of it?"

The good news is that organizations in the Asia Pacific area are increasingly recognizing the strategic importance of business intelligence. By putting the SAS®9 Intelligence Platformin place and leveraging what they have, SAS can make the shiny new wheel not only go around, but take these organizations places they've never been before.

The opportunity for SAS to make a difference exists in all Asia Pacific countries, but certainly the emerging markets of China and India command attention. With their populations each exceeding 1 billion, the need to manage and make sense of enormous amounts of data is an absolute requirement.

Their governments, faced with pressures such as meeting World Trade Organizationstandards, are opening their doors to foreign investment and ownership. Undoubtedly, Chinese and Indian corporations are facing increased competition in the market. Now more than ever, they need to ensure that they get a strong return on the infrastructure investments they have made. This is where SAS can play a huge role in 2005 and beyond.

To meet the market's needs – and I believe Asia Pacific markets are changing as we speak – SAS, as a company, has evolved. Specific to this region, we have continued to focus on building local infrastructure. We've invested in the development of local management teams – and we have doubled the amount of customer-facing staff to ensure even greater localized support for our customers. Our investment in local domain expertise and the development of our solution practices have set us apart from the business intelligence contenders. In fact, SAS now has more than 6,000 customers served by nearly 900 employees in the region.

This investment in local offices and regional infrastructure is a key differentiator for SAS. It enables us to build and strengthen relationships with our customers and our partners.

We are committed to serving this region with local country teams, key partners and the backing of our worldwide organization. SAS in Asia Pacific is strategically positioned to meet the market dynamics, and we have staked our claim.

Bio: Phillip Beniac is vice president of Asia Pacific for SAS International. He is based in Hong Kong, but travels throughout the region some 250 days a year. Beniac's reason for so much travel: to stay abreast of market changes and to take knowledge gained in one situation and apply it to another. "If I'm sitting with a CIO in Korea, I can talk about what's happening with CIOs in other geographies," Beniac said.