The past few years, and specifically the past three years, have forced companies and countries to expedite their digital transformation journeys and adopt new ways of doing business, says data analytics multinational SAS Africa and Emerging Middle East regional director Zafir Junaid. 

"Organisations have had to innovate their operations, which has led to a surge in adopting key technologies like advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve processes in most industries, including retail, supply chain management, banking, telecommunications, government and education, for example," he says. 

Leveraging the information that organisations have provides them with a significant advantage in terms of the actions they can take to overcome challenges and improve their operations. 

SAS has had three good years, owing to a surge in demand for its services and solutions from the public sector and industries that use analytics, AI and machine learning to drive decision-making processes to optimise their operations, he says. 

SAS South Africa country manager and sales director Essie Mokgonyana highlights that the company has a dedicated department for skills building and that the company provides internships that feed talent into its customers and partners across multiple sectors. 

"Our plan in South Africa is to grow the footprint of analytics systems by ensuring availability of skills in the market. A core benefit of being a global software company is that we can invest in data science programmes and thereby give back to South Africa, similar to what we do in other countries," says Junaid. 

Specifically, SAS wants to work with governments on data science programmes, and has partnered with the information and communications technology ministries and departments of various countries to offer and support skills building programmes. 

"We also train and onboard university graduates, following their qualification, as part of these programmes into these information and communications technology ministries and departments globally. 

"We bring value from the technology perspective, but this is only one aspect to be able to leverage the benefits of analytics and we need to make analytics more accessible to unlock greater value," Mokgonyana notes. 

Additionally, in South Africa, as a more mature emerging market user of analytics, organisations prefer to leverage data science skills internally, highlights Mokgonyana. 

"In South Africa, we are cooperating with banks and some enterprise customers, as well as universities, to ensure we can nurture talent throughout the ecosystem and feed the industry with the missing element, namely analytical skills. We also support postgraduate courses in data sciences at universities.” 

"We have partnered with various government departments to add to our existing skills development programmes. We also work with technical and vocational education and training colleges as a key part of the strategy to ensure data skills are available to non-university entrants into industries as well," she highlights. 

Further, SAS, in collaboration with local universities, has recently launched Teachers4DataAnalytics, which is a teacher training initiative across South Africa that provides them with the knowledge and tools to inspire their students to pursue careers in data analytics. Teachers4DataAnalytics forms part of a bigger, SAS-driven strategy focused on secondary education, and provides a bridge or feeder for the company’s Global Academic Programme in partnership with local universities. 

The team behind Teachers4DataAnalytics will take a workshop format on a roadshow to the North-West University and the University of the Western Cape (UWC) before the year’s end. 

“The Teachers4DataAnalytics programme also aligns with other SAS-sponsored talent connection programmes such as the annual Women in Analytics and Dudes in Data events, which aim to connect top school talent with SAS flagship universities. There are also a series of Grade 11 learner recruitment events that will serve as data exploration exercises at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and UWC,” Mokgonyana says. 

She adds that people and technology can’t be addressed separately. Once the right people with adequate skillsets are in place, then analytics can be used to help make right decisions to propel the business. 

"A key way in which we can help at the plant and machine level is by bringing analytics to Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Our AIoT solutions bring analytics to the edge of the network enabling remote assessment, diagnostics and AI-driven predictive maintenance," Junaid concurs. 

"For instance, energy intensity can be optimised, and yield can be maximised using data-driven models powered by robust machine learning algorithms. We have successfully deployed such solutions in offshore oil and gas rigs, process manufacturing plants as well as locally for large supply chains with industrial clients," he says. 

"By combining the domain knowledge of SAS with the existing company engineers, we deliver AI solutions that are deployed on real-time process and condition data, camera data, enterprise resources planning data to address the business challenges and reduce operational risks. There are many more examples of industrial use cases of AI in mining, manufacturing, geology and logistics warehouses and other sectors," he adds. 

"The general recommendation for companies investigating the use of analytics and AI systems is to identify specific business priorities they want to pursue or pain points that they want to fix. 

"This focuses the systems on providing direct value by either optimising their operations and processes, helping them meet certain risk and compliance guidelines and standards or directly contributing to the revenue growth of the organisation. Companies can then identify the priorities to scale as they grow," he says. 

Meanwhile, SAS' solutions are cloud-agnostic in order to support the use of analytics systems in the format that users prefer, and enable users to determine what the most effective or cost-effective infrastructure is for them to host their business processes on, and continue leveraging the benefit of AI and analytics solutions for their respective organisations, Junaid adds.