With the spreading of artificial intelligence, advanced analytics tools have already conquered many areas of life. The SAS Analytics Day conference in Budapest (Hungary) examined the present status and the future potential of data science. In this blogpost you will read a marketer’s view on one of today’s hottest topics – the current and future trends of advanced analytics.

The obvious occasion for the conference was the fact that the maturity of data science has reached such a level that enables users around the globe to leverage the analytical solutions of SAS in several areas of business.

The first presenter of the event, Pasi Helenius, Senior Business Solutions Manager at SAS emphasized the increasing importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning, he pointed out that these approaches would be the way to go. The current challenge lies in identifying the right manner and place to apply these solutions into the everyday operation of companies. On the other hand, as mentioned by the Finnish presenter, the capabilities of AI are still limited compared to that of human intelligence.Business intelligence, advanced analytics, data and risk management, fraud detection, high-level client management – these are a few of those essential elements that are already available on the market today. The big question is: what comes next?

Data science conquers the world

Brad Hathaway, Data Management and BI Manager at SAS kicked off his presentation with a surprising quote: data analysis is no longer a good opportunity only, it has to be a basic cornerstone of each company’s business activities. Yet, 86% of executives interviewed by McKinsey said they were only "somewhat effective" in their analytical work. So, there is a significant room for improvement.  David Dozoul, Head of Energy Practice at SAS referred to data and analysis as the new oil running businesses. Based on this view, customer approach can be more personalized and reliability can be increased. Companies have a huge amount of business and customer data, so their accurate and continuous analysis can result in a significant increase in their turnover and in an improvement of their services.

At the Panel discussion Krisztina Móra, Head of Competency Center at T-Systems, Gábor Kollarics, Data Officer at CIB Bank, Gábor Fauszt, Country Manager at IDC Hungary, Felicián Bartos, Data Warehouse Coordinator at the National Tax Office and Viktor Szász, Platform Presales Consultant at SAS Hungary investigated the validity of the claim saying data would become such a resource that lacking it would mean a competitive disadvantage. During the round table discussion, the significance and impact of the GDPR regulation was also discussed. According to the IDC Country Manager most companies are still unaware of the changes so he expects the spectacular punishment of a key market player over the next year, which will speed up the overall adoption of GDPR.

Local data analysis - a huge amount of data and a need for a change of perspective

Next, Albert Dunai, BI & Analytics Senior Manager from Hungarian Telekom, Ajtony Ponori-Thewrewk, Software Developer at T-Systems and Gabriella Vikárius, Data Warehouse Project Leader at the Hungarian State Treasury investigated the local position of advanced analytics moderated by József Abrán, Pre-Sales Manager at SAS. From a practical point of view, the main difficulty is to track the return on investment, which prevents most of local companies from introducing analytical tools. In addition, a change of perspective is needed: by mastering data-driven thinking, the future of a company can be better predicted based on historical trends, and this approach should play an important role in developing business plans. As stated by Tibor Loncsár, leader of SAS Hungary, even if executives have enough information about the functioning of their company or that of the market, most of them can’t analyze properly data they have at hand. "We have a lot of great data analysts, but supporting technology is still in a follow-up mode. Background support exploiting the capabilities of data scientists is still not there" - said the leader of SAS Hungary.

Banking developments, IoT and fraud detection

In the second half of the SAS Analytics Day Zoltán Rekenei, SAS Data Warehouse Engineer at CIB Bank analyzed the usage of metadata. He emphasized the benefits of the role-based development approach: its usage significantly shortens development time, unifies the development environment and simplifies the complete development process.

Imre Portik, Senior Pre-Sales Consultant at SAS and József Abrán, Pre-Sales Manager of SAS, dealt with the topic of managing huge amounts of data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT). They stressed that the enormous amount of generated data can’t be stored any longer, so the application of SAS Event Stream Processing can be a great solution as it focuses on events only and ignores information that does not match the specified criteria.

The closing presentation was held by Chris McAuley, Director of the Fraud and Financial Crime Detection Team at SAS. He showed that 1-5% saving could be achieved by using the SAS Continuous Audit & Controls Monitoring Platform as observing procurement procedures can result in filtering out anomalies that decrease corporate profits.

Advanced analytics tools are not only knocking on our door – they have already kicked it in!

The Hungarian conference of the highly acclaimed international SAS Analytics Day series brought all 300 participants closer to the practical advantages and the everyday use of data science and business analytics. SAS Hungary's goal was met: domestic leaders were introduced to new ways of increasing efficiency and profitability and improving customer service. Advanced analytics tools are not only knocking on our door – they have already kicked it in!