At the beginning of the pandemic le Italian SMEs they focused mainly on cloud (to support the work of employees in smart working) and on electronic payments (to satisfy the growing demand of consumers confined to the home). Later, they turned their attention to cybersecurity, an investment that is proving to be strategic. This is what emerges from PidOsserva, the national Observatory of PIDs - Digital Enterprise Points, structures set up by the Chambers of Commerce as part of the National Business Plan 4.0. At the basis of the analysis carried out by Unioncamere and Dintec, the answers that between 2018 and 2021 over 40 thousand companies provided to "SELF i4.0", the self-assessment test of digital maturity, presented today during Orizzonti Live Lab 2022 -IoRiparto, an exhibition organized by IoRiparto in collaboration with the Chieti Pescara Chamber of Commerce.
“The pandemic, with the resulting restrictions, has accelerated the race of entrepreneurs to use digital. There are almost 450 thousand companies helped by the PIDs of the Chambers of Commerce in this path of innovation and the results are starting to show: the level of digital maturity of our companies has increased by about 9% compared to the pre-Covid period", underlines the secretary general of Unioncamere, Giuseppe Tripoli. “However, the distance between the areas of the country is still marked: the regions of the South have a digital maturity more than 10 percentage points lower than those of the Centre-North. A gap that will have to be reduced also thanks to the Pnrr projects”.
Among the enabling technologies to remain operational even remotely, the most widespread is that relating to "mobile payments through the internet” (used today by 41,3% of companies) which in 2020 was in 3rd place; in second place follows the Cloud – in 1st place in 2020 – (equal to 39,1%) and in third place la cybersecurity – 4th place in 2020 – progressively growing in importance (equal to 35,8% of uses). Compared to 2018, companies that use the Cloud and electronic payments have increased by 8 percentage points; those that make use of cybersecurity tools and that have started an e-commerce of 9 points.
The growth of digital maturity in recent years has been more consistent among service and manufacturing enterprises than agricultural ones, among small and medium-sized businesses compared to micro enterprises and among those operating within a supply chain (B2B ) compared to those that have relationships with the end customer and on the market (B2C).
