"One fee for everything and everyone” - FANS enables workers from Wasa Kredit to attend SAS Events

[BeStibolt]

By Bettina Stibolt, Nordic Customer Marketing Program Lead 

Wasa Kredit AB offers financing services for cars, computers, and appliances.

At this year´s Analytics Experience in Milan, I meet Jari Juho for the first time during the Nordic Dinner. Working at Wasa Kredit in Stockholm, he agreed to get back to me with some thoughts and experiences on their FANS membership. He kept his promise, and you can read all about it here.

Who? Jari Juho

Title? The black T-shirt guy

Company? Wasa Kredit, a 100% owned subsidiary of Länsförsäkringar Bank in Sweden

What do you value most by being a FANS member? What do you personally gain with your membership?

I value most the “One fee for everything and everyone”. When the membership is pre-paid for a year, it´s easier for employees to participate because there is no additional cost (except time invested).

I also value the opportunity to network with lots of bright people, but also learn new things and getting updated in what happens in the SAS world.

How do you see your co-workers utilize the FANS membership benefits?

My co-workers don’t work so much with SAS now, but some of them are interested to learn more about SAS has and attended the Swedish SAS Forum and the European SAS Analytics Experience. Lately, some of them have also joined the SAS FANS network meetings.

Personally, I attend all network meetings, SAS Forum, SAS Analytics Experience, Education sessions, and I subscribe to different newsletters. I also try to watch the webinars afterward, but they are sometimes hard to find, especially the older Nordic ones (older than the latest “season”).

How do you work with SAS software today, and how does this contribute to your organization´s objectives?

The organization has been using SAS for around 10 years, but SAS has only been used as a “calculator” to run the same programs every month to get the same reports. SAS wasn´t used to create value or new insights.

When I was hired two years ago, I realized on the first day at my new work that before we can develop anything, we must upgrade SAS, build an analytical culture and get the data organized for analytics. It has been a long journey to change the mindsets of the employees to realize that we must adapt to the digital revolution or die. We have to make decisions based on facts and data, instead of intuition, but also understand that everything that can be automated has to be automated.

I love to work with SAS, and we will go “live” with Viya next month and then start to develop code and dashboards. We have a few employees who are eager to learn to develop code and dashboards, but we will also hire one more experienced SAS user (to start with). Hopefully, we can create value and new insights into the organization and expand the use of SAS as our analytical maturity increases. At the end of 2020 will we be at the frontline of analytics.

The best advice I can give is: If you want to change the organization, you must have support at the top of the organization, otherwise leave. Personally, I have had the support and trust of our CFO from day one.

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About Wasa Kredit

Wasa Kredit AB offers financing services for cars, computers, and appliances. The Company originates mortgage loans, selling mortgage loans to permanent investors, and servicing loans. Wasa Kredit operates in Sweden. More information about Wasa Kredit (in Swedish)