The Business Year

Search
Close this search box.
Marcelo Sukni

PERU - Telecoms & IT

Coming Up Next

General Manager, SAS Chile & Peru

Bio

Marcelo Sukni is a skilled and motivated senior executive with over 20 years’ experience in adding value to highly relational businesses in mass markets through the use of analytics and information management. Prior to his experience with Business Objects, PeopleSoft, and Oracle, Sukni developed his career in the BI and business analytics sector, where his expertise now helps clients make better, more informed decisions.

TBY talks to Marcelo Sukni, General Manager of SAS Chile & Peru, on expansion struggles, Peru's position in the company's regional portfolio, and emerging industry trends.

What are some of the challenges SAS faces in expanding throughout the country?

We particularly face challenges in respect of two important issues. The first challenge is the need to evangelize with regard to the benefits of business analytics, and the second challenge is the market itself. Business analytics is a totally different segment from business intelligence, which all companies are doing. Our core is analytics, which involves taking different data and sources and analyzing them in order to plan and optimize businesses’ operations. It is about coming out with a different point of view concerning the data and how it is used. Our challenges are, therefore, to champion the value of this process and to make SAS a specialist service provider for certain sectors. I want SAS to be the number-one company that business executives in the banking, telecommunications, retail, and industry sectors come to when they want to resolve a problem. This is what we will work toward over the next four years.

What is the importance of the Peruvian market for SAS in the region?

In our South Latin American region, Peru is the most important market right now because it is stable and larger than the Ecuadorian, Chilean, and Colombian markets. The business analytics market here is in touch with businesses, and we, therefore, have good opportunities with the companies. Peru will represent 20% of the region’s total sales in 2016. My plan is that by 2020 Peru will be ranked number one in Latin America for SAS.

Are there other industries where SAS could help to succeed and advance in Peru?

Retail is another potentially important area. The plan for the mining industry is simple, but we have an important focus on results. Mining companies in Peru have a high level of operational technology; however, their IT capabilities are not well developed. Our plan is to increase their performance in the IT area, including the software that they use to analyze their data in real time, which other industries are already using. This will help the mining industry reduce its costs. We look at solutions tailored to the specific issues that the mining industry is currently facing. The situation is a bit different for the retail industry, which is huge in Peru. We have many Chilean and local companies in Peru that all face substantial competition. However, none of them have much customer data. We undertake many projects in the retail sector to provide companies with customer analysis so that they can offer specific deals to their customers one-on-one. We also work with them on pricing and discounting issues. We are developing a strong, in-depth analysis for the retail market in Peru that falls into the two categories of customer intelligence and pricing analysis.

What will be the most important topics and trends for SAS in 2017 and beyond?

We have a specific plan for next year. We aim to develop a plan in banking, which means that we will have a new solution for the banking sector. It is a specific and solid solution in the area of risk. Our goal is to increase our pipeline and opportunities in banking so that we can position and implement these kinds of solutions. The other part of our plan relates to the mining industry. We want to be involved in this sector and want to position some relevant products in the market. These products are designed to assist the mining industry in reducing its costs and optimizing processes, which is a new area for us where we want to push our services.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

You may also be interested in...

Jose I. Escalante

PERU - Health & Education

Jose I. Escalante

Interview

CEO, Futura Farms

Oscar González Rocha

PERU - Energy & Mining

Oscar González Rocha

Interview

CEO, Americas Mining Corporation

Roque Benavides

PERU - Energy & Mining

Roque Benavides

Interview

Chairman of the Board, Buenaventura

View All interviews

Countries

Countries

Become a sponsor