Our colleagues at the SAS office in Korea recently had the opportunity to interview two customers from KT, one of the biggest telecommunications companies in Korea, about getting SAS certified.  Sung-chul Hwang and Gyu-seob Lee both have four SAS certifications – Base Programmer, Advanced Programmer, Statistical Business Analyst and Predictive Modeler. They shared their insights on how they prepared, what they learned and why they think having a SAS certification is important in this big data era.

What motivated you to get SAS certified?

(Hwang) Four years ago, my acquaintance in a global company strongly recommended SAS when I became responsible for a ‘Media Data-based Targeting Advertising’ project at my work, which made me pay more attention to big data. Coincidently, a big data training program was introduced at my company and the program’s curriculum was all about SAS Global Certification. It was a big chance to prepare for the exam.

(Lee) SAS Global Certification is issued by SAS, and is globally recognized as the means to validate the knowledge on SAS solutions and analytics skill. This was another big motivation for me.

What are some lessons learned while studying for your SAS certification?

(Hwang) While studying and exchanging opinions with people responsible for big data analytics in various fields, I came to understand that SAS solutions can be important tools to discovering and sophisticating big data-based business models. SAS is known globally as the big data analytics tool proven in the enterprise market.

(Lee) I recognized analytics modeling is necessary for not only IT professionals but also business leaders. Business leaders cannot rely on intuition alone to make a decision. While learning about SAS Global Certification, I came to know how attractive the SAS solution is in supporting business decision making as a big data analytics solution on various platforms.

What are your key areas of interest in SAS solutions?

(Hwang) I pay attention to SAS solutions as a tool for business model design and process innovation. To date, a corporate decision has been made through a selection process after many proposals received from responsible business units. However, interactive infographics through SAS Visual Analytics allow business leaders to make decisions with key simulated factors.

(Lee) SAS offers a unified framework for all solutions needed for analysis. Among these, I pay attention to the value of insights derived from unstructured data through a text analytics solution like SAS Text Analytics. This skill can be applied to many areas such as customer experience management, risk management and churn management.

What are your future plans as an analytics expert?

(Hwang) In the short term, I will select and carry out projects to discover a business model that involves networking and marketing, and to build management diagnosis and quality management systems and execute an organizational design project. And my long-term goal is to become a global expert in business management diagnosis and business strategy planning based on my big data project experiences.

(Lee) I want to contribute to increasing sales by developing a charging policy system and a customer loyalty system and a service subscription prediction model based on customer big data analytics. In addition, I want to discover items for new business models by using open data, while serving as a data scientist who helps improve public convenience.Embrace the big data era and get #SAScertified Click To Tweet

Any tips you would share with other SAS certification candidates?

(Hwang) I studied with official materials from SAS and manuals as basic materials, and with local Ja-Yu Academy’s SAS Macro, Data Mining Using R/SAS/MS-SQL program, SAS Evangelist’s Enterprise Miner and Enterprise Guide, and Google searches as supplementary materials. On top of these, I referred to Korean and overseas blogs and online community materials, as well as online curriculums offered by KHAN Academy and Statistical Training Institute. I hope my experience will be helpful to others who want to do work related to business big data or who prepare for the SAS Global Certification exam.

(Lee) If you prepare with a passion and a spirit of challenge, you will probably see good results. In particular, I encourage you to engage Q&As and discussions with your peer candidates, share information, purchase books and join seminars. Eventually, you will pass the certification and build up various knowledge needed to be a big data expert. Give it a try and earn your the SAS Global Certification!