SAS is the leading business intelligence player in the world, an end-to-end provider of business intelligence solutions. Reena Choudhary spoke to Vivek Gokarn, CEO & MD of both SAS India and SAS Global Services about the synergy of operations between the two entities, recent alliances and the vertical-wise focus for the company.  

How did SAS Global Services (SGS) evolve as a division? What were the factors that led to it becoming a subsidiary?
In 2000 July, SGS was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary, as a separate legal entity, with a primary focus on doing international work. The two areas of work for it were R&D and international consulting. It has proved itself to be successful in that. Technically speaking, it has been in place since 1999, as a division of SAS India. Due to its immense success, we decided to hive it off as a separate legal entity. It was then that it became a subsidiary.

SGS has grown to 55 employees in 2.5 years. Today, SGS works in three areas, the first being classical R&D. This aspect deals with the best of SAS technologies and trends.

International consulting, another sphere of work, gives us a comprehensive knowledge of customer facing opportunities. About two years ago, we started intelligent solutions development, which falls between the former two.

We started building industry intelligent solutions, with a focus on individual industries. Coupled with the R&D strength of SAS, they can be deployed in customer situations with a much higher productivity.

What are the synergies between SAS India and SGS? What areas would remain specific to SGS in the future?
The synergies with SGS arise out of its expertise in international consulting. It has successfully completed many projects in the international arena, and has also made reasonable profits.

Some employees were recruited in the international markets, including the US. The knowledge and expertise that some of the consultants have gained is being put to use for SAS India.

These consultants would work for SAS India, and would become employees of the same. While management control would be the same for SAS India and SGS, the operations would be synergised. Going forward, we would retain SGS as a pure development entity, and thereby concentrate on only R&D and intelligent solutions development.

With the market for business intelligence expanding, what are your plans for increasing the employee strength?
We are recruiting under the SGS banner, and plan to increase our workforce by 80 positions by December 2003, 70 for technical and 10 for support. In SAS India, we plan to strengthen our sales force. We are planning to double it in order to tap the growing market. Currently SAS has a leadership position with a 22.5% market-share in India. I look forward to maintaining this position and further increasing market-share in the country.

What are the verticals you operate in and who are your clients in the same?
We are strong in banking, pharma and telecom, which will continue to be cash cows for us. Manufacturing is very nascent in the business intelligence space.

Currently, we are engaged with a leading automobiles vendor to do a warranty analysis. ICICI Bank, Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank and the RBI are our clients in the banking space.

While we have Hutch and BPL for telecom, Nicholas Piramal and Novartis, along with Clinical Research Organisations constitute the pharma base for us. Infosys also buys our software to build SAS projects for their customers across the world.

What are the benefits you see arising out of your alliances with Mindtree Consulting and Tata Infotech?
We are planning to foray into the manufacturing and government segments, and these alliances go a long way in ensuring the same. Tata Infotech has strength in the government space and we plan to float some joint tenders.

In the case of Mindtree, the focus is largely to do with manufacturing; it has a strong manufacturing base in the South. We would like them to help us with consulting as they have a very strong consulting arm.