Mining for knowledge

The Universidad de los Andes School of Management introduces graduate students to the power of SAS®

The Universidad de los Andes (UniAndes) is a private, nonprofit, non-confessional and non-political institution. Since its foundation in 1948 in Bogotá, Colombia, the UniAndes has been committed to educating the country's best and brightest minds. It has played an active role in the production of thought, science and progress.

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Alfonso Pedraza
Professor, School of Management, The Universidad de los Andes

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UniAndes' School of Management (UASM) was established in 1972. It is one of UniAndes' nine constitutive academic schools. Through its academic programs and research activities, UASM has developed a consolidated school that promotes constant interaction between students, faculty, staff and the corporate world. UASM's program is available at undergraduate, graduate and the executive education levels.

UASM has international accreditations from the European Quality Improvement System and AMBA – the Association of MBAs.

UASM educates students in a country that, while often tumultuous, is also undergoing tremendous modernization and growth. In the past decade, the country's businesses and government have begun collecting vast quantities of information on databases. "But nobody's analyzing it deeply," says Alfonso Pedraza, professor of operations and technology.

Working with SAS, Pedraza is introducing Colombia's future government and business leaders to the science of data mining. Los Andes offers a course that teaches students how to use SAS Enterprise Miner software. "SAS has a very strong platform that is known worldwide. We're bringing added value to our students by introducing them to SAS," explains Pedraza.

The importance of data mining
Pedraza believes learning how to analyze data is particularly critical for students in Colombia, where the political and economic climates are more chaotic than in neighboring South American nations and Western countries. "The Colombian environment has high levels of uncertainty and risk for companies, and we have an institutional framework that is relatively weak in comparison with other countries, even in Latin America," he says. "That gives us challenges in preparing people. They will need to attend to problems that don't exist elsewhere." Pedraza's own education – which will include a doctorate program in management beginning in September 2006 – delves into areas like the effects of terrorism on logistics and the logistics of humanitarian aid. The school also tries to prepare students for the challenges of global trade.

"Our school is where the future managers and administrators are being prepared. And we want to prepare people to make decisions based on information," Pedraza says. Learning SAS, he adds, gives his students a competitive advantage. While few companies in Colombia use data mining, the number is growing and sometimes analysts in businesses that employ that advanced technology report directly to the company president. Learning SAS puts Los Andes graduates in a position to take very high-profile jobs. "Our graduates will have a very strong advantage," Pedraza says. "Knowledge of SAS will open doors for them."

Offering the latest education in information technology is also a point of pride for Los Andes. "Part of our strategy as a school of management is to maintain ourselves on the cutting edge, to have very good professors, to receive the best students and offer programs that are up to date and respond to the immediate needs of the marketplace," Pedraza says.

Going beyond statistics
Pedraza believes teaching SAS is critical because it helps students learn about model building, forecasting and preparing what-if scenarios – the types of analysis that can't be accomplished with a spreadsheet-based program. They can learn how to use software tools to detect fraud or prepare a customized marketing campaign. "They see the time savings and the power of analysis," says Pedraza, who also uses less robust programs for comparison. "SAS is a platform that allows you to use millions of pieces of data. With some programs you are limited to about 1,000 data points." Along with SAS Enterprise Miner, the university uses SAS Enterprise Guide, the Microsoft Windows interface that helps non-programmers derive full value from data mining.

To offer the course, Pedraza had to learn to use the software himself. That's been made easy by SAS training courses, both in Colombia and the United States. Pedraza can work with SAS employees based in Colombia or call the United States for additional help. "The support we've received from SAS has been very strong," he says, "and to a great extent, our success with this course is due to the help we've received from SAS here in Colombia."

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