With Africa's appetite for analytics expanding phenomenally, Nigeria could emerge as a data innovation growth hub, as dynamic young executives seek to use advanced analytics to drive their businesses, says SAS.
This is according to Razel Mavhungu Mushiana, the new GM for SAS Rest of Africa (ROA), who, as part of his new role, has been visiting partners and clients across Africa over the past two months.
Mushiana says he has found that Nigerian businesses are particularly keen to make the most of their data to grow revenue and reduce risk. "We're seeing increased budget allocations to data management, covering risk and fraud management, customer intelligence and productivity," says Mushiana. He notes that many top enterprises in Nigeria are staffed by educated young executives who have returned home after working overseas, and who now want access to the same advanced analytics tools they used elsewhere. "They are engaging with organisations like SAS in search of solutions. And this is not a 'fashion statement' - it's a genuine quest to move towards a more productive environment," he says.
Both Mushiana's own fact-finding visits and information from the SAS office and partners in Nigeria indicate a high level of dynamism and innovation in Nigerian business, with enterprises looking to use advanced analytics to gain a competitive edge.
Nigeria, with a fast-growing population and economy, aims to become one of the top 20 economies in the world by 2020 in line with its Nigeria Vision 2020. Recently listed as the most watched frontier market in the Frontier Strategy Group's FM Sentiment Index, Nigeria is booming. Mushiana says the financial services sector and the telecoms sector are showing rapid growth and are particularly advanced in terms of analytics adoption. "In these sectors, a range of executives from COOs to chief marketing officers are using analytics to understand their data and plan ahead," he says. "They want to reduce risk and respond to what customers are saying, what they want, what they are buying and what they think of the service they receive."
Mushiana says Kenya too is proving to be an innovative market showing strong interest in advanced analytics for improved business. "Here, we find sectors like the mobile money pioneers, in particular, looking to better understand how customers consume products and services, and what they want," he says.
This upsurge in demand for tools to deliver competitive advantage presents a range of opportunities for SAS across Africa, says Mushiana. The company aims to extend its focus beyond the current financial and telecoms sectors foothold and aggressively target untapped verticals such as government, particularly in education, health, social services, public safety and security. Where in the past, budget restraints and skills shortages were hurdles in the way of analytics adoption, companies across Africa now understand the potential ROI on advanced analytics, while SAS and its partner network have made solutions more user-friendly, backed by highly qualified skills and support resources, he says. To help meet the growing demand for world-class analytics in Africa, SAS aims to expand its African partner network in future, and will also look to engage with academia to develop analytics skills in various regions.
SAS hopes to replicate the success it has enjoyed in South Africa over the past 20 years in other parts of the continent. As the leader in software and analytics services, SAS helps businesses respond to and embrace constant evolutions in technology and to better understand their data in a highly competitive market. It recently announced an overhaul of its global partner programme to better leverage partners' domain expertise to benefit clients and to formalise the skills development process around specialisation, certification and competency paths through new marketing and enablement benefits.
Share