Italian companies invest in software, not in e-commerce – Digital4

  How much are really spread the modern digital technologies in Italian companies? One answer comes from ‘ Istat, that has just released a special research on companies with at least ten employees, so even small-medium ones. The picture that emerges is mixed results: the Internet now seems to be indispensable, so much so that in 2014 98.2% of these companies possessed a Internet connection (96.8% in 2013). 95.0% of companies connected to the Internet in fixed and mobile broadband (94.8% in 2013). The use of mobile broadband is clearly growing, so to be involved in 2014 60.0% of companies (49.8% in 2013).

 A testament to the culture of work in mobility now you are imposing, 66.8% of companies (up sharply from 53.1% in 2013) said they have provided to their employees mobile device, such as computer or smartphone with mobile connections for business purposes. Percentages are less striking, however, for a number of other items: a business website is in fact used by 69.2% of companies with at least 10 employees (88.9% among those with 250 or more employees).

 But only 31.8% of companies (51.9% among those with 250 or more workers) makes use of social media (24.7% in 2013). Then does not mark a particular increase the percentage of companies involved in electronic commerce: in 2013 were 42.5% versus 44.4% in 2012. Among other things, Istat are increasing as companies that sold on- line their own products or services (by 7.6% in 2012 to 8.2% in 2013), while they declined even those who bought on the web (41.7% in 2012 and 39.6% in 2013). Even on the delicate issue of electronic invoicing, of which so much has been spoken in recent months, , the picture is positive only half: just 8.2% of businesses say to invoice only in hard copy to other companies or to the PA, but is still low, the percentage of enterprises that use e-invoicing in a format suitable for automatic processing (5.4%), while it is very common digital billing not suited to automatic (56, 7%).

 On the other hand, research Istat reports a constant growing interest of our companies in the software, for example the presence of the CRM has increased from 13.3% in 2009 to 23.1% in 2013, up to achieve a remarkable 28.2% in 2014. It also significantly increased the spread of software for automatic sharing of information between different functional areas of the company (ERP) , which rose from 9.7% in 2009 to 27.2% in 2013 to 37.2% in 2014.

 The Institute of Statistics, finally, notes a very high circulation tools cloud computing, or rmai used by 40.1% of companies over 10 employees, with particular attention to cost savings and efficiency improvements. However, 12.2% of companies use exclusively in the cloud email services. The cloud computing services purchased most frequently are, in order, e-mail (which employs 34.5% of companies), the use of office software (16.5%), the use of application software for finance and accounting (13.4%), services of file storage (12.7%), database hosting company (11.1%) and CRM software applications (5, 8%) and the use of computing power to run software of the purchasing company (3.2%). It is interesting to note also that, for the moment, the mode of public cloud appears to predominate: 28.2% of companies was in fact from providers that offer such services using shared servers, compared with 14 , 4% who chose the private cloud.