Nova Milanese, March 25, 2015
Yesterday the conference "Execution and emerging collaboration: finally united" was held at the headquarters of the Politecnico di Via Durando 10 in Milan. The Professor Stefano Mainetti, scientific director of the Observatory Collaborative Business Application, and his team of researchers, presented the datas of the second research about the phenomenon of "Social Collaboration", an initiative created to understand how to improve the performances of business processes by integrating collaborative tools in the current Enteprise Information Systems.
The survey has been realized to organize the phenomenon and to present the situation of Italian companies, highlighting what are the business areas and processes more involved. In this regard the survey has been conducted on a sample of 97 CIOs and 83 Managers of line of business. It showed interesting results. The response has been very positive, in fact more than 40% of the sample companies have started or are planning at least an initiative aimed at Social Business Collaboration. For large companies, the percentage is 60%, with a growth trend of 22% compared to the last year. Highlights are also found in the degrees of satisfaction of social initiatives, in fact about 85% of the sample companies have expressed satisfaction with the social projects of the company. Companies are interested in Social Collaboration tools because they positively affect the traceability of information, the knowledge sharing and the dissemination of work leaner, adhering to the logic consumer. Some of the problems that the social collaboration arises to solve are: the excessive use of email, the lack of sharing and communication between the different organizational units and the numerous losses of time to search information. The stimulus to collaborative initiatives realization not derive only from IT departments, but also by the top management, from marketing and employees.
During the conference there were two panel discussions that highlighted the supply side and the demand one of Social Collaboration world: The first part has been dedicated to some important vendors of collaborative tools such as IBM, Altea, Oracle, Top Consult and our partner Infor. Fabio Della Lena (Infor Solution Architect)spoke about Social Business, presenting Infor Ming.le (portal Social Collaboration) that is "the only solution that integrates seamlessly with all existing enterprise systems." In support of its analysis, he reported some success cases like the Ferrari one. The second discussion has been attended by some CIOs of important Italian companies that presented their projects of social collaboration. IT managers of IQT consulting, Mediamarket, IVAR, Ermenegildo Zegna and Conserve Italia indicated the requirements that have stimulated the introduction of collaborative tools and the advantages reached in recent years.
This conference has highlighted that the Social Business Collaboration is a challenge still open, but with an exponentially growth factor. We had confirmation that the topic is really interesting for Italian realities but these are still insecure and shy in front of this change. Twingroup, along with Infor, strongly believes in the opportunities that the Social Business tools can give to Italian companies and it works every day to spread Social Business idea because certainly the development of business information systems will be more and more in this direction.
Monica Lutrino (Marketing Coordinator Twingroup, Infor Partner).