SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For the challenge of “Big Data,” few companies match Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), one of the world’s largest banks. With 220 million customers and 600 million accounts, the bank processes 200 million transactions daily. To sift through gargantuan volumes of data, the bank relies on software from SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, to make better business decisions, build stronger customer relationships, and improve risk management.
With volumes of traditional account and transaction data, as well as data from mobile payments and other new sources, ICBC embodies the Big Data challenge facing global businesses today. Through scalable Big Data Analytics technologies from SAS, businesses like ICBC find insights within Big Data that help them compete and succeed.
"The era of 'Big Data' has arrived: multi-petabyte data warehouses, social media interactions, real-time sensory data feeds, geospatial information and other new data sources are presenting organizations with a range of challenges, but also significant opportunities," said Philip Carter, Associate Vice President of IDC Asia/Pacific. "Moving forward, as CIOs start to adopt the new class of technologies required to process, discover and analyze these massive data sets that cannot be dealt with using traditional databases and architectures, it will become clear that the real value will be derived from the high-end analytics that can be performed on the increasing volumes, velocity and variety of data that organizations are generating."
Big Data Analytics
SAS has been supporting Big Data environments for years. Big Data is only interesting if you can derive analytical value from it. So it’s not so much Big Data but Big Data Analytics that provide real value and insight.
SAS has an extensive set of capabilities that help support Big Data Analytics, including grid, in-database, and in-memory. These capabilities can be leveraged across SAS solutions, including data management, analytics and BI/reporting, as well as industry-specific and horizontal business solutions.
“With Big Data Analytics, organizations can make better and faster decisions based not only on what has happened, but what will happen next. They can also predict the best possible outcome while remaining agile in swiftly changing times,” said Mikael Hagstrom, SAS Executive Vice President, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Global Survey: Analytics Emerging
Bloomberg BusinessWeek Research Services conducted a global survey -- sponsored by SAS -- in May of 930 business professionals to determine the state of business analytics in their organizations. While business analytics have become widespread, with 97% of survey respondents reporting some use in their organizations, the vast majority of companies are not yet using the more sophisticated analytical capabilities available. Per the survey, less than one in five businesses have adopted technologies that capitalize on evolving sources of information (such as Web data, social media and unstructured data from text and video).
As in the rest of the world, organizations in the Asia-Pacific region have warmed to the idea of making use of their data for insights. While most are still at an early or emerging stage in their use of analytics, some organizations have embraced business analytics to harness Big Data and turn it into valuable insights and better business decisions.
China Guangfa Bank, the first Chinese bank to issue credit cards, is one such company. This emerging bank faces big data challenges as it prepares for a possible multi-billion dollar IPO in Hong Kong as early as this year. For example, it must manage credit risk for its rapidly growing credit card portfolio, with more than 12 million cards issued. China Guangfa Bank relies on SAS for a broad and scalable analytics platform to meet its data analytics needs.
“Analytics are crucial for China Guangfa Bank to help manage and derive value from huge amounts of data on customers, operations, credit risk and more,” said Dr. Yachen Lin, CRO of China Guangfa Bank Credit Card Center. “SAS provides us with a strong and proven analytics framework to meet our ever changing data analysis needs, help differentiate our bank from competitors and enhance our marketing effort. With SAS analytics, China Guangfa Bank is ready for the future, a future that may hold an IPO but that will definitely hold more and more data.”
Korea’s automobile insurers are getting slammed with fraudulent claims. The country’s Financial Supervisory Service reports a one-year increase of 30 percent. Unfortunately, most insurers do not respond effectively – either because they lack enough claims investigators or because they base their predictive models on existing industry statistics.
But not Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance. Using SAS for fraud detection and prevention, Korea’s largest non-life insurer has built a system that prevents claims fraud and improves premium payment processing, thereby protecting its most profitable customers.
Other Asia-Pacific examples of organizations turning to analytics include:
- KDDI, Japan’s second largest telecommunications provider, is using SAS® for Customer Experience Analytics. With SAS for Customer Experience Analytics, organizations can quantify and analyze the “experience value” of customers by collecting data regarding customers’ behavior on the Web, and integrating and analyzing customer data and purchase data.
- The Malaysia Building Society Berhad (MBSB) relies on SAS® Rapid Predictive Modeler to help it reduce non-performing loans and deliver more precise insights about its customers (see release).
- The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) relies on SAS analytics to speed investigations and build investor confidence (see release).
For more on Big Data Analytics, SAS hosts the Business Analytics Knowledge Exchange, an online community for independent discussion on business analytics trends and best practices. Industry experts frequently contribute on solving real-world problems through business analytics.
Today's announcement came at The Premier Business Leadership Series event in Singapore, a thought-leadership conference presented by SAS that brings together more than 600 senior-level attendees from the public and private sectors to share ideas on critical business issues.
About SAS
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 50,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®.
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