The Heidelberg software company SAS intends to grow and adjust – Rhein-Neckar Zeitung

By Daniel Bernock

Heidelberg. A few years ago, the experts agreed to trade: In the future, all transactions would take place in the network. Meanwhile, the Internet giants have realized that online is not everything. Recently announced, for example, Amazon plans to open its own stores first. And since shopping than ever must be an experience more today, digitization in trade plays an increasingly important role.

The software company SAS, its Germany headquarters is located in Heidelberg feels this trend with an increase in demand by analysis software. “There is nothing more frustrating than when a customer walks into a store and the part that he would like, then is not there,” Wolf Lichtenstein said, CEO of SAS Germany, Austria and Switzerland yesterday in an interview with RNZ. It is therefore important to adapt as the storage and assortment planning to the purchasing behavior of customers. What do customers want when to buy? Who knows by analyzing the collected data, the discounting of the leftover goods spare.

Lichtenstein believes that a combination of Internet trading and stationary store network is the optimal solution for the trade. Shopping must also be the “experience,” Lichtenstein said – with a pleasant atmosphere and services such as free WiFi in stores. The classic cards that previously produces a significant proportion of so valuable to the industry data, Lichtenstein are however no future. More important would be the online portals of the merchants and apps in the future, perhaps even cashless payments with your smartphone. Essential is the continual analysis of these data, because the preference of customers would change now faster than ever.

An important market for SAS Germany is also production industries. The industry in this country is currently in a “sandwich” says Lichtenstein. On the one hand would press Angle Asian competitors who could get better and always cheaper produce. Second rule of top pressure, as more and more new players came on the market who want to established companies make market shares in dispute – such as Google & amp; Co. is currently in the automotive industry. In order to assert themselves in this difficult environment, the industry put more and more on production optimization by analyzing their data.

Today, most machines are equipped in factories with sensors that constantly produce data. Currently, however, only 30 percent of these data would be analyzed as Lichtenstein. By in recent years significantly falling prices for memory and computing capacity would occur for more companies in question, now “intelligent” use this “treasure”. By analyzing this data, among other production processes can be optimized and failures to predict -. Known under the slogan “Industry 4.0″

This year, SAS Germany will grow faster than the market, and estimates vary between six is expected to grow 10 percent. The increasing digitalization in all areas, more and more data are available, which must be analyzed by software, as Lichtenstein.

In Heidelberg, where the company has around 380 employees, SAS plans to hire more. In Germany, a total of 517 employees for the American group work. Before the current economic uncertainty Lichtenstein do not worry. One of the best years was 2008, the crisis year: “In such years the pressure is greater, to search for optimization potential”

.