Analytics software vendor SAS has gone the unconventional route in hiring a marketing executive as its new Canadian subsidiary President.
Usually subsidiary leaders come from finance or sales, but Cameron Dow bucks that trend.
Dow did serve as vice-president of marketing for SAS in Canada and Latin America, before being named President of SAS Canada. But what makes this hire even more interesting is that Dow was also a market analyst for IDC Canada doing research in the software industry.
Dow has been in the IT space for more than two decades and his new mandate at SAS Canada is to focus on driving revenue growth in three areas: cloud, big data, and the Internet of Things. He also said maintaining a winning workplace culture will be another goal of his.
Dow said investment in analytics technology in both the public and private sectors continue to grow, signalling increasing market demand for analytics solutions that deliver high value.
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SAS Canada’s former President, Carl Farrell has transitioned out of the corner office to focus on a broader role as executive vice president and chief revenue officer of SAS.
Farrell commented on the Dow promotion saying Cameron has been a member of the senior management team for over a decade and has been instrumental in the growth and success of the company’s business in Canada, in addition to supporting growth strategies in Latin America.
Dow takes over SAS Canada at a time when the company is placing a bigger emphasis on the financial sector. Recently SAS introduced SAS Risk Data Aggregation and Reporting, a product that works to bridge the gap between islands of data. This new offering is being positioned by SAS to address the increasing financial regulations in major markets not just in with banks in Canada, but the U.S. U.K, Germany and China.
According to SAS, banks are like a chain of islands with differing business priorities and technology needs, blanketed by a fog of mismatched data infrastructures and siloed processes. These differences, combined with massive and ever-increasing volumes of data, make it difficult to manage critical information optimally. Many banks still rely on manual workarounds – such as Excel spreadsheets scattered across the organization – to deliver aggregated data, which leads to an inability to clearly view all the data leads to a lack of cohesive reporting.