Unique booth demo and standing-room-only breakout session get rave reviews
You may have heard the term “insight driven organization," or IDO. What is it and why is it important for companies to be driven by insight as opposed to instinct? IDOs embed analytics, data and reasoning into their decision making processes. They don’t view analytics as a project with a start and end date – instead, they see it as a core capability across their organizations. They view data as a strategic asset. And they realize that instinct can’t predict continuing changes in consumer behavior. At the end of the day, becoming an IDO involves having people, processes, data and technology being informed by an analytics strategy.
SAS alliance partner Deloitte recently held their Experience Analytics event in London, and invited SAS to participate as a sponsor. This highly experiential event brought together almost 200 C-suite executives - from a variety of industries - to discuss the latest data and digital trends, with a focus on how organizations can move to insight driven decision making. Attendees heard from an impressive lineup of speakers, including George Ell, Director for Western Europe at Tesla Motors and author, broadcaster and journalist Matthew Syed of Black Box Thinking.
As a sponsor at the event, SAS’ presence included a booth with an interactive rowing machine experience which fed data into SAS, calculated metrics and displayed them right there in the booth. Participants could enter a contest to win an Amazon Echo device, creating some fierce competition and generating a lot of attention and fun. (Check out this YouTube video about how SAS was a sponsor of Great Britain’s rowing team in the 2016 Olympics.) The SAS booth really stood out and showcased our commitment to the Deloitte alliance and the breadth of our portfolio. Deloitte has already requested that we replicate the rowing machine demo at their events in the future.
Hugo D’Ulisse, Head of Information Management for SAS UK, presented a breakout session titled “#subcriptionisthenewgold - the journey to a new economy”, where he discussed the business models of companies like TripAdvisor and Airbnb, and how, with analytical insight, you create the paradigm shift required to thrive in an economy where subscriptions really are the new gold. His standing-room-only presentation received the highest audience attendance at the event.
The primary objective of SAS’ sponsorship was to showcase SAS as the number one analytics vendor in the marketplace. We also took advantage of opportunities to interact with Deloitte customers, generate leads for sales teams to follow up with and network face to face with staff from Deloitte. The SAS team left the event with 40 new contacts. Rick Joplin, who heads up our strategic alliance relationship with Deloitte, summed up the event in one word: “phenomenal”!
