As has been known and evident for some time now, Covid is facilitating e-commerce and above all pushing many commerce businesses onto the Internet. Only between April and October of this year, i.e. during the first lockdown and in the months immediately following, according to data from Unioncamere were more than 3.600 trade companies that have opened an online sales channel, to be able to operate even in this moment of difficulty.
Commercial companies equipped with e-commerce are therefore grew by 15,5% in seven months: there were a total of 23.386 units in March 2020 against 27.007 in October 2020). “The pandemic emergency – explains the Unioncamere press release – has forced many entrepreneurs to accelerate their digitization process to react to adversity and try to remain productive even remotely. Overall, almost one Italian company out of three has equipped itself technologically for sales and payments on the web”.
In detail, after the first phase of lockdown, from May to September 2020, the number of SMEs that have equipped themselves with e-commerce tools increased by 4 percentage points (27% against 23% in the same period of 2019) and by +5 percentage points those that have equipped themselves for e-payment (36% against 31%). The run-up to adopting these enabling technologies for online sales it seemed faster in particular in Friuli Venezia Giulia (+27 percentage points), Puglia (+19 percentage points) and Basilicata (+22 percentage points). And it is still Friuli Venezia Giulia that clearly stands out from the average for e-payment (+30 percentage points).
While from March to April 2020, also Frto facilitate the use of smartworking, the adoption of cloud tools (+11 percentage points) and cybersecurity (+3 percentage points) recorded a boom. “This acceleration – continues Unioncamere – is part of a path of continuous growth undertaken by companies in the last three years towards the 4.0 economy which sees Trentino Alto Adige leading the national ranking for levels of digitization more advanced than SMEs".
