Announcing the 2025 Customer Recognition Awards Winners

[AlexBeaver]

We are thrilled to announce the 2025 winners of the SAS Customer Recognition Awards! With over 60 inspiring entries submitted and several customers nominated for each SAS-chosen category, this year's awards program was an excellent showcase of the powerful impacts SAS customers are making across the globe. Please help us recognize the winners below.

Check out the Winners e-book

Awards from customer-submitted entries

Community Uplift Award

Awarded to a SAS customer who made an impact in their community at large using SAS products.

1^st Place Winner: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, United States.

2^nd Place Winner: Shionogi & Co., Ltd., Japan.

3^rd Place Winner: Merck, United States.

Innovative Problem Solver

Awarded to a SAS customer who uses SAS in innovative ways to solve a business problem.

1^st Place Winner: AstraZeneca K.K., Japan.

2^nd Place Winner: ABSA, South Africa.

3^rd Place Winner: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kenya.

SAS Analytics Explorers Advocate

Awarded to a SAS customer who is using the SAS Analytics Explorers program to grow their skills, career and/or network..

1^st Place Winner: EY ifb, Markus Weick, Germany.

2^nd Place Winner: Merck, Murali Neela, United States.

Awards from SAS nominations

SAS Customer Impact Award – Public Sector

Awarded to a public sector customer who has had the most impact through a willingness to share their analytics journey, successes and lessons learned with others.

Winner: Iowa Department of Corrections, United States.

The SAS and Iowa Department of Corrections partnership reflects the power of using an analytics framework that is scalable, repeatable, and flexible to provide a broad selection of analytic capabilities to achieve significant transformation and change the long-term trajectory for their correctional clients. Through a continuous SAS collaboration, IDOC can continue to pursue value streams that share critical justice information, providing a unified framework for client accountability, while focusing on reducing recidivism and increasing public safety, all while setting a data-driven standard for supervision and rehabilitation among their correctional peers. Congratulations to Sarah Fineran who is accepting this award on behalf of IDOC.

SAS Customer Impact Award – Private Sector

Awarded to a private sector customer who has had the most impact through a willingness to share their analytics journey, successes and lessons learned with others.

Winner: Georgia Pacific, United States.

Georgia-Pacific has been a SAS advocate since March 2020 when they first partnered with SAS to share their experience at SAS Global Forum. Since then, they have partnered with SAS on multiple video testimonials on topics ranging from Data Strategy, Computer Vision and Generative AI which all supplement their original story on Optimizing the Supply Chain and equipment efficiency with analytics and IoT. They have worked with SAS to publish multiple blog posts and articles on sas.com, provided quotes for press releases and supported the publication of their SAS story on the AWS website. We recognize Roshan Shah and Sam Coyne who are accepting the award on behalf of Georgia-Pacific.

In-House User Group Leader

Awarded to an In-House User Group Leader demonstrating a dedicated passion for the success of user group members.

Winner: Marina Ayerst, Absa, South Africa.

Marina Ayerst spearheads the aSASins Community of Practice in-house user group within ABSA. With weighted contributing factors, the aSASins group stood out among several worldwide nominees. Meeting monthly with high rates of consistent attendance, aSASins allows for cross-functional team collaboration and integration, playing a key role in driving an enterprise-wide SAS Viya modernization program for model risk management.

User Feedback Award

Awarded to a customer who provides valuable feedback on SAS products and has been an essential reference for product improvements.

Winner: Secretaria de Estado de Fazenda de Minas Gerais, Brazil.

SEF/MG has been a long-time, active SAS user and endorser, contributing to product improvements through several interactions with our support team. They have provided valuable insight for performance tuning accessing DB2, tuning of SAS Job Flow Scheduler that was not processing large flows – and always act as a partner concerned with the best usage of SAS products. In addition, SEF/MG is migrating to SAS Viya 4 and has been contributing to the evolution of SAS automation tools.