Results benchmarking study digitization of operations of Italian companies

Digital transformation, framed within the Industry 4.0 framework, is not only an opportunity but a real necessity for companies that want to compete with increasingly innovative products and services of value to the customer. Digitization therefore must include the digitization of processes, products and services.

This has become the theme today for all companies belonging to all industries and beyond.

The ’impact and speed of this transformation depends on:

• from the internal and external context
• from the strategy
• from the investment
• from engagement

Basic success is based on sound design of all factors involved.

The Benchmarking Study What's next in Operations?,which designed and launched our Knowledge Office, to measure the level of maturity of Italian companies with respect to Digital Transformation, Sustainability and Operational Excellence issues,took a snapshot of the state of the art and best practices in Operations with a view on human resources as well.

The research involved top managers from more than 100 companies, including 85 % with more than 100 employees operating in 22 different sectors, from plant to engineering, from consumer goods to automotive, from life sciences to electronics and packaging.

The questions focused on three basic directions:

• operational excellence (processes of generating, producing and distributing value to customers)
• digital transformation(technologies to create new value for customers and economic returns for the company)
• sustainability (environment and people).

Highlights

• The research results show that the surveyed sample shows a substantial growth figure over the three-year Post Covid 2020-2023 period with respect to the main indicators turnover, employees, and especially market share.
• Companies in the sample have a perceived level of digitization as low in 36%,good in 51% and only 9% high and 4% very high. This trend does not vary significantly by firm size in terms of employee numbers
.
• Processes are digitized for more than 40% of the analyzed sample and digitization has been planned for more than 60%, In parallel, dashboards have been implemented and are planned to detect KPIs. Digital Transformation, therefore mainly concerns the adoption of essentially "non-innovative" management systems such as ERP and MES.
  Big Data are implemented for only 12% of the sample analyzed, but almost 28% of the sample analyzed have planned implementation.
• The percentage of turnover in investment in process digitization appears limited. In fact, more than 69% of the sampled companies invest less than 5% of turnover in these strategic projects, and in the future investments will be with an unchanged or slightly increasing budget for 86% of the surveyed companies.

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