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This was achieved in a year where businesses where ravaged by the SARS outbreak and its negative effects-SAS minimised these effects due to its significant local investments by establishing strong local country operations across the region. The result is also due to a strong demand in the business intelligence industry, where it sells analytical software to help companies make sense of their large amounts of data and maximise their efficiency in the lean economy.
SAS states that its strategy to move away from selling generic software tools to more packaged software applications geared toward specific business problems has started to pay off. Such sales have been particularly strong in the Financial, Telecommunications, Public and Manufacturing markets where it has focused much of its efforts.
Based on SAS' strength in it's core and state-of-art technologies, the key sales for the period were achieved in the Financial markets where the drivers for the increase were Risk, Credit Scoring and Basel II, together with Customer Intelligence at The Bank of East Asia, Ltd, Bank West, Hyundai Capital Service Inc, Equitable PCIBank, Citibank N.A. and Westpac Banking Corporation.
In the Telecommunications market this was achieved with Customer Intelligence and Financial Intelligence solutions to noted companies such as KDDI, KT, V-Smart. Ltd, Telstra and Telecom NZ Ltd.
Capitalising on the strength of the Warehousing and Data Mining Solutions, SAS made sales to the Public Sector across the region, which included DEWR in Australia; Bureau of Internal Revenue in the Philippines; Department of Health in Taiwan; and the China Ministry of Railways.
6 Sigma and Process Improvement were the preferred manufacturing solutions with companies such as POSCO.
Phillip Beniac, Vice President of Asia Pacific stated that he was pleased with the consistent growth of the software revenue in the region and the continual investment both to office infrastructure and the headcount for its strategic offices. He said, "SAS continues to reap the benefits of its R&D investments, the delivery of the SAS 9 platform, plus the introduction of the Industry Intelligence Solutions that allow users and new customers to take advantage of these leading edge technologies for the Financial, Telecommunications, Public Sector and Manufacturing sectors."
"SAS has continued its move toward providing industry-specific solutions, combining its unparalleled analytic strength with the added value of domain expertise in the above sectors. Some of our business successes such as Sa Sa International Holdings Ltd., DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd., The Hong Kong Jockey Club and Federal Express Ltd. have also contributed to the growth in 2003," said Peter Tsang, Sales & Marketing Director of SAS Hong Kong.
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