• Big Enterprises: the adoption of integrated systems between the ’80s and the ’90s. Important further investments for the Millennium bug and the adoption of Euro.
• International referential applications : SAP, BAAN, Oracle application, …., the emerging MS (MS Dynamics)
• MSEs: A big part of enterprises low attention to managing phenomena.
• Some far-seeing enterprises has adopted application solutions (above mentioned or national solutions equally valid).
• There is an accepted fact: IT average investments make Italy the bottom of the barrel of developed countries.

Some Observations

During the last years, the increasingly heated IT market competition has lead to a unification of supplies, to the disappearance of many companies, and to the sensation that ERP softwares (Enterprise Resource Planning) are a commodity, easily interchangeable. “Softwares are all the same”

The IT cost: talking about the Managing software, many Italian firms think it is a high unsought expenditure, lived as an external obligation. “It’s too expensive!”

Several operators opted for the “industrial” way: closed solutions, standard functionalities with high customization costs. Operating has become difficult for Italian SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) that have to convert Flexibility and Adaptability in the only competitive possibility. “It doesn’t suit to us!”

The cultural problem of a great number of our companies, difficulties in transforming the business availability of managing tools in real instruments for the control and management of the firm. “It’s not useful to me…”

The difficulty in innovating. Unfortunately, Italy has lost a lot of opportunities appeared during the last decades. Only a little bunch of national operators can have its say in the global context: we often assist to a sort of technological colonization, whose aims and standards are to be accepted tout-court, without any possibility of discussion or sharing. “We have always acted in that way…”

Although the difficult context and a saturated market (as the majority thinks), we are convinced that there are interesting possibilities of developing, starting from a deep innovation of the business model.

Competence macro-analysis

Shelf Products Strenghts: Low cost and not repetitive (in part true) Weaknesses: assistance, scalability, cannot be used on the web, not personalizable, limited functionalities..

Open Source Products Strenghts: no purchase cost, Web, big communities. Weaknesses: foreign products, assistance, difficulties in scalaring and personalizing.

Traditional Supplier (Small IT enterprise; with own personal product) Strenghts: Relationship with customers, limited cost (500 € per license) Weaknesses: functional coverage, no personalizing technologies, weak towards aggressive commercial policies.

Traditional Supplier (Big IT enterprise, International) Strenghts: diffusion, functional coverage, multinational presence, market leader. Weaknesses: difficulty in acceding in the SMEs’ market, high costs, “Freemium” model not applicable.