Italian Firms Are Going Digital. And It Shows

CLOUD MANAGEMENT AND MOBILE MARKETING: SMES ARE QUICKLY CHANGING THEIR SKIN

by Paolo Pasini and Angela Perego, Dept. of Management and Technology, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti


The analysis of how Italian SMEs are facing the digital transformation reveals a tactical and rather pragmatic perspective. A study of 300 companies conducted by SDA Bocconi School of Management in collaboration with Teamsystem shows that in these companies digitization starts with innovation in administrative and management systems, their functional expansion and integration with business processes more strongly affected by the new technologies, such as e-commerce, internal collaboration, factory automation, digital channels of interaction with the market, that is, from the fundamental components that make digital transformation concrete and successful. Innovation in management solutions is currently developing along three lines, the first two more dependent on the evolution of IT supply, the third more proactively pursued by managers.

The first driver is the sophistication, breadth and integration of applications, which increase the so-called functional coverage of operational and decision-making processes in companies (for example in the direction of e-commerce, where 28% of SMEs plan to invest over the next three years, to more or less sophisticated business intelligence, where 38% of businesses will invest in the next three years).

The second driver are management solutions that adopt digital technologies (such as mobile, where 25% of Italian SMEs are going to to invest in the next three years, or web platforms, that are deemed crucial by 22% of companies, or clouding services, which will be bought by 16% of companies in the next three years).

The third driver is the belief that today it is imperative to adopt the latest management practices and that management solutions packages supplied by the market can be a way to attain best-practice levels.

The results are very encouraging: the sample exhibits current and prospective digitization rates that are 2 to 3 times higher than World Economic Forum rankings or OECD averages (e.g. with respect to mobile marketing and cloud services). The research study also reveals that there are clusters of Italian SMEs, mainly operating on the domestic market, very specialized and focused on product quality and B2Bb services, which are gradually abandoning the logic of customized management systems or personal productivity tools, in favor of packaged solutions found on the market, either vertical or extended. These are pragmatic firms that are aligned with the EU average and are not running after digital fads. They could act as examples and pull along other SMEs in the innovation management.