Zuko Mdwaba has taken over as SAS SA general manager.
He takes over from Desan Naidoo, who has been promoted to vice-president of the Africa region. Naidoo will now be responsible for business development and growth in four regions: SA and Nigeria as standalone markets, East Africa and SADC countries (excluding SA) as a standalone market, and French-speaking Africa.
The company says the appointments come amid a restructuring process of the Middle East and Africa business to meet the unique needs of - and to drive success in - emerging markets.
Mdwaba joined SAS in May 2016 as GM for the commercial business unit. After eight months in this role, Mdwaba helped SAS exceed its annual sales targets by over 30% and was inducted into the President's Club.
"Zuko has truly made his mark in the short time that he has been at SAS," says Naidoo. "He is passionate about unlocking value for our clients through advanced analytics and never settles for the way things are: he's always looking for the next opportunity and how best to help our clients leverage them.
"He is target-driven and motivated by exceptional customer service and mutually beneficial relationships. If he can do so much in eight months, I'm excited to see what else he has planned for the local office."
Mdwaba was previously country leader of Oracle's technology general business unit.
He says his vision for SAS SA includes achieving double-digit growth by diversifying its revenue sources. "When we talk about advanced data analytics, we often default to the financial services sector because it is the most mature in its use of analytics. But the reality is that data analytics can unlock extraordinary business values for any organisation, in any vertical.
"I want to help organisations operating in telecommunications, the public sector, retail and everything in between to use the data they have to uncover insights and drive transformative business decision-making."
He adds the company needs to leverage its global expertise and see how it can replicate those successes in the country.
Mdwaba started his career as a network management specialist at Telkom, and went on to be an enterprise architecture consultant at Schlumberger and was in business development management positions at Atos and Escher Group.
He holds a computer science and statistics degree from the University of the Western Cape and completed the executive development programme with the University of Cape Town. He also holds several qualifications in project management, telecommunications, database architecture and data modelling.
"Organisations need to understand what they have and how they can use it to drive value for existing customers and attract new customers. This is only possible through analytics and I'm excited to work with some of SA's most innovative organisations to help them do things differently," notes Mdwaba.
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