SAS Asia Pacific has announced its annual
financial results for 2003, achieving 20% growth year on year, despite a
turbulent software application market segment. This achievement establishes SAS
as the outright leader in the Business Intelligence software market place for
the region which includes India, Japan, China, South Korea, Australia and New
Zealand, and the ASEAN economies.
This growth is attributed to a strong demand in
the business intelligence industry, where SAS sells analytical software to help
companies yield maximum benefits from their large amounts of data and drive
efficiency in the lean economy. This was further augmented by significant
investments in establishing strong local country operations, and SAS's strategy
to move away from selling generic software tools to more packaged software
applications geared towards specific business problems.
Based on SAS's 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 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, Korea Telecom, 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 AsiaPacific
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."
Mr. Vivek Gokarn, MD & CEO, SAS India Pvt. Ltd
said, "In-line with SAS Asia-Pacific, SAS India exhibited strong double-digit
growth, thereby demonstrating the tremendous value 'Business Intelligence' has
attained in the India context. We are confident that 2004 holds great growth
potential. We will continue to contribute significantly in helping our customers
achieve their business goals, by demonstrating value based on their
industry-specific needs."
