IT Leaders / SAS Korea Country Manager Sam Cho Special importance attached to transparent management An important task of a CEO in nurturing and developing a company is to take on the most competent employees, plus motivating them to display their abilities to the maximum. In this sense, Country Manager Sam Cho of SAS Korea (www.sas.com/korea) deserves the attention he is receiving from related business circles as he has been leading the growth of the company by being devoted to this management philosophy since his inauguration in January 2004. In fact, it is said that before his inauguration, inconsistent policy, including personnel affairs policy and welfare policy resulting in empty pledges, was rampant in SAS Korea. After his inauguration, Country Manager Cho has been concentrating his efforts on motivating the company's employees through several incentives such as a full package of health examination, health club as well as English education support and so forth, attaching special importance to open management and opening to the public of management results transparently. As a result, the rate of people leaving their jobs at SAS Korea has dropped from 30% in the past to 8% last year, according to Cho in a special interview with The Korea IT Times. In particular, Cho noted that thanks to his motivation management policy, SAS Korea's revenue has doubled last year in comparison with 2003, posting over 20 billion won (approx. $20.61 million) in the case of 2005 which has grown over 28% compared with the previous year. The most-comprehensive BI platform offerings in the industry As one of the top IT solution providers in the world, SAS is a global company that provides diverse customer firms with Business Application across management. As a global solution provider spanning about 30 years, customers comprising 98% among 100 larger enterprises selected by Fortune are utilizing SAS's Business Application, according to the Country Manager. Moreover, Cho explained that SAS is carrying out continuous technology development with active R&D's investment and has held No. 1 among IT companies in which jobseekers would like to work most in the world for two consecutive years selected by Fortune. As of 2005, SAS Korea covers roughly 600 sites including finance, manufacturing, circulation, government, public, and education institution plus its domestic application solution reaching to about 200 corporate solutions such as 6sigma, Basel II solution, CI (Customer Intelligence), & FI (Finance Intelligence) etc. In SAS, No. 1 Business Intelligence Vendor for Asia Pacific (by revenue), the top six countries are South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China and Hong Kong based on new license revenue. South Korea's excellence in terms of management results reveals Cho's management ability not the least, according to insiders in SAS. Country Manager Cho emphasizes that as a frontrunner of BI (Business Intelligence) software as well as the service field which offers BI platform & BI solution along with SAS 9 launched from April, 2004, SAS has been dedicating itself to providing BI solution environments of the highest level in the world for about 30 years. This is to allow corporate customers to be able to secure competitive superiority through more accurate and correct decision-making, profit relation improvement between customer and supplier and so forth. In a nutshell, BI offers four intelligence functions, such as forecasting, simulation, optimization, and planning, the most core elements the management wants, according to Cho. He underscores that accordingly, for the sake of swift and accurate decision-making, SAS addresses vision and strategy about the past, the present and the future of customers with excellent statistics/analysis application and system integration's flexibility technology power. In conjunction with the fragile software field in Korea as well, the Country Manager points out that Korea lags behind in application software, although Korea is a high-speed IT power in fields such as telecommunication and infrastructure. In that regard, he proposes "Let's keep SW alive" with several policy support measures and a change of mentality, indicating that Korea still is not sufficiently conscious of the importance of software. Concentration on Data Integration market SAS has been the object of attention in the BI solution market such as Basel II, ABM, SPM (Strategic Performance Management) based on EIP (Enterprise Intelligent Platform). In addition, the company drew attention because of its tailor-made business intelligence application development platform as well. Country Manager Cho says that the BI market is estimated to grow larger than in 2005 such as public industry's performance management that started in 2005, finance institution's compliance market, and manufacturing field's 6sigma solution market. Based on such associated market outlook in 2006, he stressed that SAS Korea will raise market share in the platform market with Data Integration Server including Data Quality function as well as BI Server information competence management was strengthened, in addition to concentrating on SPM based on EIP, Finance Management, Compliance market, 6sigma market, and distribution industry BI solution. Concerning key industry field, the Country Manager stresses that SAS Korea will focus its business point on Enterprise Intelligence Platform, Financial Management, Basel, CRM and Retail segment too, adding that the company will capture BI market through SAS9, current key solution EIP (Enterprise Intelligence Platform). In regard to the firm's marketing plan, Cho explained that SAS Korea is planning to concentrate on the Data Integration market by beefing up ETL functions. Along with this, to boost its phase in the finance management solution field, which is growing rapidly, he said that the company plans to reinforce target marketing alongside ceaseless investment for nurturing internal special manpower in the field of FM. He concluded with the comment that SAS's management philosophy has made SAS even stronger, for instance through no lay offs and reinvesting directly, consistent revenue growth and profitability, commitment to innovation, and investment in domain expertise and so forth.