KUALA LUMPUR: Big data solutions provider SAS aims to record a double-digit growth this year, underpinned by continued growth in usage of big data analytics (BDA) and data visualisations.

In an interview with The Edge Financial Daily, SAS Malaysia managing director Andrew Tan said the company’s collaboration with the Malaysian government to provide solutions to BDA continues to be an integral part of its business.

Its collaborations include those with the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu).

“Mampu owns open data platforms, whereby there is publicly available data for various government departments, and that is one main source to tap into for big data,” he said.

“We are also working with a number of government agencies, such as the Inland Revenue Board. We use software to look at collections and focus on groups of people [who] pay late so as to launch a series of initiatives to make them pay early, for example.

“Another example is the Valuation and Property Services Department. They have huge amounts of data on land and buildings, and properties the government owns.

“So the biggest challenge is how to get all these data in, integrate it and provide a visualisation on where the government should be focusing its development on,” he said.

Tan said Mampu has also begun some pilot projects using analytics in areas such as crime prevention, monitoring consumer prices as well as public sentiments around topical issues such as the goods and services tax.

Last year, SAS recorded a 29% increase in total revenue to RM63 million and a 13% growth in total software revenue amounting to RM46.3 million.

Tan said in Malaysia, SAS’ market share in advanced analytics stood at 35%.

SAS is one of the major players in the big data sector assisting the government to provide, enhance and build BDA to address some of the country’s persistent, difficult issues.

The company is part of a group of technological service providers such as Dell, SAP Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBM Malaysia Sdn Bhd and Telekom Malaysia that are members of the National BDA Innovation Network.

The network will be working on several high-impact projects such as dengue prediction and prevention, combating organised crime and drug trafficking, as well as identifying tax fraud through predictive analytics to reduce the nation’s tax gap.

SAS had announced in mid-April this year that it had inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Multimedia Development Corp Sdn Bhd to strengthen collaboration to drive BDA adoption and to build a strong and sustainable BDA ecosystem in Malaysia.

One of the objectives of the MoU is for SAS to establish a centre of excellence (CoE) to promote BDA through high-impact BDA proof of concept (PoC) projects.

It was reported that the SAS-completed PoCs include aiding an oil and gas company (O&G) to predict machinery failure to avoid possible outage, helping a manufacturing company to optimise product yield and a telecommunications company to predict customer behaviour.

Other areas that continue to hold growth for SAS in Malaysia are its traditional stronghold of the banking and telecommunication sectors, with the latter now being one of the leading players with regard to adoption of analytics, Tan said.

Last year, SAS announced its partnership with Silverlake Group to introduce big data analytics solutions to banks in Malaysia in areas such as fraud, risk and data management.

However, Tan said five years ago, there was a lot of activity in BDA around banking, but has since branched out to other sectors.

“We are also seeing increasing adoption of analytics in the O&G sector as well as manufacturing,” he said.

SAS Europe, Middle East and Africa as well as its Asia-Pacific president Mikael Hagstrom (pic) said BDA has contributed much to the regulatory aspect of banking.

“There is a very focused and pragmatic approach in Malaysia where the focus is on outcomes. Some of the areas in banking that analytics is used include the risk aspect, anti-money laundering, calculating capital ratios, as well as assets and liabilities and so on,” he said.

SAS South Asia regional vice-president Tan Yen Yen said the banking sector continues to be the largest spender on information technology (IT), but is facing stiff competition from non-traditional online payment service providers which are amassing increasing amounts of investment.

“Third party online payment solutions are increasingly encroaching into the pie share of IT investment,” she said.

“So traditional banks are seeing various forms of competition and the areas where SAS is helping them out [enhancing customer experience and loyalty] are even more critical now.

She also said another area that is poised to serve as a potential growth area for analytics is smart cities that are being touted in Singapore, India and some parts of Malaysia.

She said Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines continue to be large markets for SAS, but the company is eyeing the growth potential it has in Indonesia. “It is a big untapped market. We want to put more feet on the street and partner with local vendors there,” she added.

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on May 18, 2015.