How much web technologies are widespread in Trevigian firms? How
the small and medium-size district enterprises confront themselves with
technological innovation which emphasized for example the web as a potential
instrument to enlarge markets by means of electronic commerce? How much
important are application as ERP- Enterprise Resource Planning - integrated
managerial conceived and developed for large organizations?
We try to answer to these questions starting from data that every year are
collected and processed by the Observatory “Webs and technology for the
small and medium-size enterprise” of the TeDIS centre www.univiu.org/tedis/research.htm, that deals
with the study of adoption and diffusion of ICT (Information and Communications
Technologies) in Italian districts. In 2004 more than 70 enterprises of the province of Treviso
belonging to the principal industrial districts have been interviewed: 40
enterprises specialized in home-furniture products (Livenza and Quarter of
Piave), 16 enterprises specialized in fashion and 18 in mechanical productions
(Inox Valley). It has been specifically investigated the degree of
equipment of the leading web technologies, trying to grasp the impact that ICT
had in firms from the point of view of processes and of the support to
competitiveness.
Results
show a very interesting scene if compared to the national
context (45 most important Italian districts, about 800 firms interviewed).
The Trevigian district firms show technological equipment generally
higher in comparison with the degree of spread of ITC in the others
small and medium-size Italian enterprises. If on the one hand it is confirmed
a predilection for commodity technologies (electronic mail, web site, corporate
banking), which are cheap, easy to implement and consistent with the way
of doing business of district enterprises, on the other hand it is possible
to observe all the same a clear investment of enterprises toward ERP and
project solutions.
With more than 10% extra compared to the Italian scene,
ERP prove to have really significant penetration rates
in a productive context characterized by small and medium-size
enterprises. This datum shows an evolutionary path that is conscious of
advanced management solutions that possess the capability of sustaining
the effectiveness of enterprises and of assuring a better structuring and
control of internal processes.
But the Trevigian enterprises prove also an attention
to technological solutions oriented towards the management of connections
with the web of partners of the enterprise. Extranet for suppliers
and distribution are developed by about a quarter of enterprises and by
about the 15% respectively (SFA- Small Firms Association - with values doubled
compared to the national scene), while the attention for the protection
of relations with the market is proved by adoption rates of CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) doubled compared to the Italian average.
If these data show an investment in technologies for the management
of relationships that can guarantee a competitive advantage for enterprises,
on the contrary the fewer number of enterprises that declare to do electronic
commerce recognize the limits of a reading of ICT only in transnational
function. More than the 80% declares that e-commerce solutions are unsuitable
as regards enterprise process/product, consequently strategically irrelevant
and unusable to guarantee the relationship with the market that is necessary
to the enterprise for the definition of its own offer. Moreover, in the
second place, it is pointed out how the e-commerce could have negative effects
from the point of view of relationships with traditional distribution (7,
5%).
The majority of enterprises interviewed believes that ICT
had a high impact on business management (43, 2%), in some cases
(9, 5%) showing that they have completely transformed the enterprise whole
activity.
In the actual competitive scene, these results are a positive
sign of the capability of trevigian small and medium-size enterprises of
coping with competitive challenges with appropriate instruments.
Eleonora Di Maria
TeDIS Centre
eleonora.dimaria@univiu.org
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