What is the state of data analytics in Italy, and how can the country create a data culture that is more inclusive?

“One indicator that could help us in understanding the data situation is that 95 percent of all companies in Italy have fewer than ten people and turnover of less than 2 million Euros,” says Giorgio Carlini, eBusiness Director at the luxury fashion brand Brunello Cucinelli. 

With so many SMBs and even microenterprises, Carlini adds that data best practices and even tools that allow companies to practice data-driven approaches can be difficult to find. 

Another factor that influences building a data culture is education. “Just as an example, only 20% percent of Italians between 25 and 64 years old have a university degree. That’s compared to 33 percent on average in Europe,” Carlini adds. “I’m not covering all the challenges that Italy might have at the moment, but these two elements could tell us one part of the whole story.”

In industries such as book distribution, data can play a prominent role. Luca Paleari, CIO of distributor Emmelibri, notes that their customers appreciate the visibility into the market that good data practices give them. “Publishers having data about their business and being able to base their decisions on this data helps them and reflects well on us,” he says.

Davide Santillo, Business Functions and Data Director of Gucci, compares his past work in pharmaceuticals to his decade overseeing data for a 100-year-old company. “Data is very important to understand process, generate efficiency, and enable good decisions,” he says. 

Although sometimes the topic of data culture can have a low priority in companies, Santillo says, the benefits can be substantial: more efficient processing, higher efficiency, and reduced workloads for some parts of the business. 

The change management challenge

All three executives agree that in a country with less mature data cultures – they estimate that less than 40 percent of Italian companies have strong ones – fostering data-driven decision-making can mean starting on a new journey or even restarting an existing one. This could be true for several reasons:

  • Data culture is not considered a priority in the organization
  • Margins are considered healthy enough that management doesn’t see the need for data culture
  • Traditional management believes that they understand the business climate based on decades of experience

On a day-to-day level, they agreed that five best practices are vital:

  1. Start with top management to build commitment and establish priorities. “Creativity processes will be always led by authentic human genius,” says Cucinelli’s Carlini, “but data could play a relevant role in retail execution, both online and offline.”
     
  2. Help decision-makers evolve beyond retrospective data. “Sometimes people prefer to base their decisions on experience instead of trusting what’s coming out from AI and analytics tools to drive their choices,” notes Paleari. “But we have to help them use data more proactively.”
     
  3. Connect the data to the customer. In product-driven industries, using data in the supply chain is a natural fit, but data can break new ground as well by improving the customer experience and growing the business. “I like to say: Let's utilize data not only to gain business insights but also to deliver best-in-class service to our customers,” says Santillo.
     
  4. Make data a business conversation. “In the past data was managed just by technical people and the business side was looking on and wondering what they were talking about,” says Paleari. “But just having the data alone is not enough. We heard that loud and clear at my company and made it much more business based. Now they trust the data a lot.” 
     
  5. Help grow confidence in your data. “I consider this mandatory,” Carlini says, “because without confidence and trust in your data it would be extremely difficult to get the attention of the people who need to take a decision. This has to go to the governance level where the business becomes aligned on tools, data, sources, and the way in which each KPI is calculated. That’s fundamental to every decision-making process.” 

Aligning voices

All three executives agreed that data solution vendors have a role to play in fostering a stronger regional or even national conversation about data. “Last year some colleagues on our team joined a challenge sponsored by a vendor,” Carlini says. “The participants had one month to work on a business case, bring together the data and insights that they wanted to share, and make a final presentation to a committee. It was a nice experience, but probably we need more of that in the community.”

In conclusion, Gucci’s Santillo notes that data enthusiasts within the IT team can often act as culture facilitators for the broader teams, helping bridge the technical-business divide. This is a great way to begin building a data-driven culture and to define KPIs that keep people on track.