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Early in the history of computers, it was clear to anyone looking closely enough that the ability to gather and analyze data could radically change the way we live. When we talk about automation, it is precisely this task that was best left to machines to handle, and once computing became powerful enough to do so, that predicted radical change soon followed.
The technology of today is the most powerful it’s ever been. The practice of analytics has benefited greatly from that advancement, but without the right software, all the power in the world is for nought.
It’s a reality SAS analytics solutions understands implicitly. The leading analytics software developer started life in 1966 as a North Carolina State University project intended to find a better way to put agricultural data to use. The result was SAS, a purpose-built software package capable of processing enormous amounts of data via mainframe computers.
The release of the first version of the suite in 1972 caused its founders to incorporate the SAS Institute. One of those founders, James Goodnight, remains SAS Institute’s CEO today. From these humble beginnings, SAS Institute is now the largest privately held software company in the world: a multibillion-dollar business with a global footprint.
“It’s a unique company in that regard,” says Shafik Khashouf, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience, Practice and Professional Services and Delivery at SAS Europe Middle East & Africa and Asia–Pacific.
“We take pride in being the founder of advanced analytics and machine learning, and also in our focus on human capital. We’re continuously listed on Forbes as a great place to work, and we’ve been featured in many MBA case studies about how we’re able to attract and retain talent,” Khashouf says.
That a company renowned for interfacing with machines can so strongly prioritize the human element says much about SAS Institute’s reading of the market.
“Clients choose SAS for its powerful quantitative decision-making platform. Our platform helps decision-makers quantify risk, identify associations, calculate probabilities and create propensity-to-buy models among many other use cases. Until recently, we were the only game in town for that,” Khashouf says.
“Our vision is to be the most trustworthy analytics partner on the planet.”
That platform is SAS Viya, which harnesses the company’s legacy and experience to provide models built fast and scaled further than its Founders may have dreamed possible. But the market has shifted, and according to Khashouf, competition has stepped up.
“We’ve had to grow in terms of how we respond to that change,” he says. “But one thing we remain true to is that we’ve always been a proponent of responsible innovation and that’s something at the heart of everything we do right now.”
SAS is, he adds, one of the authoritative voices on what it means to generate responsible AI, a gatekeeper role that’s never been as crucial as in this era of consumer-level AI.
“We have to make sure there’s transparency to protect against bias, and the software we create reflects that.”
Khashouf brings a deep understanding of the software ecosystem, honed through leadership roles at Microsoft and his subsequent work at the renowned strategy management consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton.
“I worked with Booz Allen’s European strategy consulting spin-off Booz & Company, primarily doing strategy consulting work,” he says. “I did a lot of work in the Gulf region, particularly in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.”
The experience gave Khashouf the strategic know-how to ask the right questions at SAS, where he’s been for 16 years.
“If we’re dealing with banks, telcos or the public sector, what’s the best strategy to adopt? How do we tailor our solutions to be market relevant? What do we focus on, and what do we customize?”
Like many before him, Khashouf was drawn to SAS by its commitment to employee development and wellbeing, a core principle of its leadership approach. This dedication is a long-standing tradition at SAS, famously reflected in these words by its founder, James Goodnight: “95 percent of my assets drive out of the front gate every night, and it’s my job to make sure they come back the next day.”
Khashouf is ensuring that this legacy is continued under his stewardship.
“SAS has been a pioneer in this area for such a long time,” he says. “As we’ve moved away from being a purely technical platform toward providing solutions, we’ve upskilled our people and resources to be able to position, sell and implement those solutions and deliver value to the clients in the process.”
SAS has engaged heavily with its employees along the way.
“That’s truly remarkable, because other companies in the space often take the shortcut way: firing and then hiring the required skills.”
That’s where SAS is different. “We encourage our people to acquire new skills and provide career development opportunities to make that possible,” Khashouf says.
“We’ve created comprehensive programs as we’ve aligned the organization in the direction from which we see growth happening and worked with our employees to get the necessary competencies in the right areas. And we’ve done this in a manner that’s participatory and aligned with our values.”
The Europe, Middle East and Africa regions in particular have demanded that stipulation, given the number of workers’ councils and the amount of regulation that surrounds the changing of job descriptions.
“We’ve been able to achieve our goals in a very ethical and systematic manner that positions our consultants as thought leaders in the areas they’ve recently been skilled at,” he says.
“They’ve had the opportunity to grow, to prosper, to acquire new skills and really become ambassadors for SAS and the value our product can bring to the market and our customers. Again, we’re very proud of that.”
The initiative was transformative for SAS, and neatly dovetailed with Khashouf’s personal leadership philosophy.
“I subscribe to a management philosophy of altruistic leadership,” he says.
“I believe that the role of a leader is to help the people that work under him through creating a climate where they can prosper and thrive.”
“Responsible innovation is at the heart of everything we do.”
Khashouf’s executive outlook was born during his time at Microsoft after working closely with a mentor. “I visited him in his house in the Netherlands, where I saw a painting of flowers on his wall,” he recalls.
“I asked him who the painter was. He said he didn’t know; he was simply attracted to its alignment with his personal philosophy of making a thousand flowers blossom.”
The message resonated strongly with Khashouf.
“If I can influence a thousand people to thrive and prosper, that’s fulfillment for me. And I believe over my career, I’ve very much done that,” he says.
“I’ve had a positive influence on a lot more than a thousand people so far, and that’s what motivates me to wake up every day, come to work and look for more opportunities to drive value for our customers, as well as create an environment for our employees and partners to grow.”
The positive direction in which SAS is headed is in part a response to a changing market. The greater the competition, the more SAS had to adapt.
“We had to change,” Khashouf says. “We had to expand our solution business over our platform business.”
The SAS Viya platform allows clients to create analytical models that help them make informed decisions possible, as well as quantify the impact of those decisions.
Solutions, on the other hand, have a wider range of applications.
“We branched into solutions for banking, the marketing space, risk and fraud,” he says.
“Now, some of the biggest banks in the world use our solutions for management of risk and asset liability, as well as protecting against credit card, internal, third-party and other types of fraud.”
Governments also employ the SAS solution suite to guard against tax evasion and to provide an entity for public security.
“Our consultants truly are scholars in the industry,” Khashouf says of the SAS consultant network, which consists of both internal teams and external partners such as Core Vision Technology, Sutra Management Consultancies, Linktera and India-based Ryzklytix Consulting Solutions.
“They work with our customers to find the best practices in their specific domain, whether that’s fraud detection, risk management, digital marketing or analytics. They need to be able to quickly realize value from using our platform and come up with something robust, scalable, secure and trustworthy.”
The key, he specifies, is trust.
“There’s a lot of fear within the market about AI and machine learning and the decisions that are being made by nonhuman entities. How can you interpret those decisions as being done fairly and without bias?”
While much is being done to create frameworks around that topic, Khashouf says SAS is a longtime pioneer in the segment.
“We’ve really charted the path in terms of responsible AI, so we’re able to strongly protect against biases,” he notes.
All of this is a part of the journey SAS has been on since 2022: the pathway to developing an initial public offering (IPO).
“The IPO we announced that year is attracting a lot of attention from investment bankers,” Khashouf acknowledges.
“That’s brought with it a lot of change and, if you want, controls we’ve had to adopt internally in order to be IPO-ready.”
The situation also gave many within SAS reason to pause and reflect on the purpose of going public.
“What do we hope to accomplish? What are we trying to do as a company?” he asks. “And what differentiates us from the competition? It’s brought these questions to the fore, and we’ve seen all of our SAS employees resonate with the answers: our mission, our vision and our core values.”
“I’ve watched partners start from nothing and become businesses with revenues in the tens of millions of dollars. It’s a point of pride for me that we can be that supportive.”
One of those central beliefs is the power of curiosity.
“We all believe curiosity is at the heart of human progress, and part of that curiosity is the scientific method, the ability to infer conclusions from the hypothesis your curiosity generated,” he says.
“And our SAS Viya platform is designed exactly for this.”
The SAS Viya platform is designed to provide clients with basic statistics in order to infer, validate and confirm hypotheses, all the way to machine learning and AI models that learn from data and can draw future predictions.
“Our vision is to be the most trustworthy analytics partner on the planet,” Khashouf says. “That means being able to drive responsible innovation, to explain the outcome of models, to eliminate bias and make sure your model is easily interpreted.”
When these elements come together for a client, he adds, that business is then able to rise to the level of the partners they’re seeking.
“It’s also a unique opportunity for our consultants, who aren’t content with high-level recommendations and PowerPoint generation. They go a step further.”
Digital transformation is a huge movement across all industries at the moment, and data is a critical element.
“How do you use that data with automation? How can you use AI decisioning in order to generate decisions at speed and to scale? This is where our vision plays an important part.”
Partners and key allies are just as important to SAS, especially during such a transformative time. SAS and its alliance of strategic partners work closely on everything from joint marketing plans to pipeline review calls.
“Our strategic partners get a sizable portion of our time, investment and resources,” Khashouf says. “They also get coaching and support during the sales cycle.”
These “value-added resellers” don’t just resell SAS software, but generate further value on top of the suite itself.
“That’s part of our commitment to generating the most value for our customers,” he says. “We focus on the partners that are able to deliver that value.”
In exchange, those key partners work with SAS in a much more proactive way.
“They also work with us much more transparently,” he adds.
“Wherever we operate around the world, we have partners strategic to that specific region. It’s not a programmatic approach with frequent management reviews or resource alignments either, those partners typically have their own defined domain or industry that we operate with accordingly.”
SAS provides potential partners with a very focused onboarding plan. “They get the right training and mentoring that’s required for them to be successful,” he says.
“I’ve watched partners start from nothing and become businesses with revenues in the tens of millions of dollars. It’s a point of pride for me that we can be that supportive. Their success is our success.”
And at the core of that success is the SAS Viya platform and range of solutions Khashouf believes are the richest and most robust on the market.
“They are the reason why customers come to SAS when they want a platform they can trust,” he says.
“I’ve talked about the vision of SAS to be the most trustworthy analytics and machine learning and AI partner on the planet, and that vision is manifested in the wealth and breadth of the solutions we offer.”
The entire value journey, from gathering data to actioning insights, can be done beneath the SAS umbrella.
“And because our analytics platform allows integration with open source, we’re significantly faster and more scalable than the competition,” he says.
“We can manage everything related to the science of decision-making.”
“We have to make sure there’s transparency to protect against bias, and the software we create reflects that.”
This is, he adds, the reason why a clear majority of banks rely on the SAS platform. “A lot of competitors have niche specialties,” he says.
“SAS, on the other hand, is slowly but surely putting together all the pieces of the puzzle so that we’re the single destination for customers and resellers. That’s why we have HSBC, ING and others reliant on our platform. Our solutions are the hub of the decision-making process they go through every day, and we aspire to be even more.”
Square in the company’s sights are government, energy and utilities and the healthcare sector.
“In fact, our healthcare solution is currently at the forefront of innovations and United States Food and Drug Administration approvals.”
Even all these years later, the potential to be gained from a unique understanding of analytics is massive, and SAS has the experience and the know-how to take full advantage of it.
“Our concentrated approach to incrementally drive value and create that canvas of everything the customer needs is what will continue to boost our success. We’ve been very proactive in working with resellers, partners, global system integrators, and our IPO is generating even more of those opportunities.”
As the IPO push continues, Khashouf says SAS is reinventing itself once again – and clients stand to gain significantly.
“SAS is going to be the most exciting IPO in the analytics and AI space,” he says. “While the IPO readiness journey continues, we’re staying true to our values, committed to our employees and partners, and we’re doing it in a way that creates growth and opportunity for everyone on the journey with us.”
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