The Neapolitan company Optima Italia spa is a solid multi-utility specialized in offering integrated energy and telecommunications services with over 100 customers throughout the country. From 2010 to today, it has achieved an 87% increase in employment, reaching approximately 400 units, including internal and commercial networks. A small army of young people hired in every area of the company, mainly in administration, marketing and customer service, with an average age of 29.
At the helm of the company an ownership and an equally young management: the president of the company is Danilo Caruso, 44 years old, while the managing director is Alessio Matrone, 37 years old, assisted by a team of motivated and qualified IT managers, marketing experts and communicators. An apparently non-hierarchical organization but based on the principle of individual responsibility and better participation in the corporate community with levels of efficiency. The economic crisis makes it necessary to save more and more on costs and Optima Italia offers customized rate plans for business telephony, ADSL, electricity and gas. With a precise mission: to simplify the customer's life, take over 100% management of the supply of services, leaving entrepreneurs free to deal only with the core business.
Today, Optima Italia's numbers are significant: with constant growth in over ten years, we have reached a turnover of 150 million in 2013 with a growth of 27% compared to the previous year.
Doctor Caruso, how does an intangible "product" establish itself on the market?
“We are a multi-utility, we offer a set of supplies that before us were considered and managed only individually. When we launched ourselves on the market, in order to have a sustainable competitive advantage we consolidated these services, and thanks to internally developed software we can trace the best composition of them for each customer. In practice we have achieved in the field of domestic and business users what happened a few decades ago with holidays, when tourist villages were born which transformed the various components of holidays into a single complete experience”.
What is the secret of your success?
“Succeeding in our job is difficult, improvising it is impossible, it requires a great many skills for each single service and for each product unit to be managed: for mobile telephony, energy, gas, there is a need for vertical specificity , of a high level of know-how that allows each single business unit to be integrated. It took us years to perfect ourselves, our ambition is to be a silent, efficient and simplifying partner for each customer, to do this we dedicate many hours of work to projects that anticipate the needs of those who choose us and that bring about constant innovation".
What is your innovation about?
“It's in our approach, which is that of consulting companies (and not service supply companies, ed.). We have the ability to constantly diversify and specialize in creating projects and implementing them on customers. Another fundamental aspect is that relating to the software that we develop internally, with a software house of thirty people, in order to be as flexible as possible, as well as autonomous. Our offer is innovative by definition, it has no equal on the market”.
How it was possible to achieve all this: you and your partner Alessio Matrone, in 1999, were very young. Just entrepreneurial flair?
“There is a flair, the desire to grow up and above all there is a 'vision' of greatness. I had a mother who often told me that a little at a time you get everything and she had great organizational skills. The secret is this: with a good corporate organization you get a lot. I studied music when I was a boy, and this also taught me to have great discipline".
How does such a company grow financially?
“Through many small rules that we have made our own, starting from the a project model: at university I studied that companies have a life cycle destined to end sooner or later and that in perfect competition there is a tendency towards the elimination of profit, therefore to overcome these two limits you have to look further and invest further. Another great lesson comes from the conversion of Olivetti, my first case study at the University, which precisely in the awareness of this cyclicality anticipated the natural "death" of the company and implemented a correct reconversion before it occurred. It is therefore necessary to work in the constant search for what the future may be and this is a rule for all those who follow me. Finally, we have chosen a setting whereby the sources of collection must precede those of payment, this allows us to raise cash and therefore keeps us in the financial autonomy necessary to do banking. Furthermore, we are in dialogue with a southern investment fund, financed by an Italian fund, which will accompany us towards a future listing on the stock exchange".
In an industrial system in crisis, what can Optima do to support companies and how does it deal with the recession as a company?
“We help companies by saving them time and money, but above all by allowing them to be able to plan utility costs, which today means a lot. For our part, we feel the crisis as a contraction of the market: if in 2012 there were 2 million and 200 thousand VAT numbers, today there are 1 million and 800 thousand, the market has contracted and the average turnover per customer has decreased by 20%. We are still growing but less than we could. We had forecast a turnover of 2013 million euros for the end of 160, we will probably close with 150 million. Suppliers are also dying, especially in hardware. Others, such as a Swiss energy provider, no longer want to work with Italy whose reputation is increasingly low: here there are no banks with an "A" rating, so even if there are guarantees, prudence keeps the interlocutors away , are afraid of the risk of default”.
The role of Europe?
“I have always been rather skeptical because it is really difficult to bring together the different and complex cultural identities of each nation under a single currency. It is a long process that takes hundreds of years. We have a huge public debt, high taxation also due to high tax evasion, uncontrolled public spending. Not to mention the taxes on the cost of labour”.
What could be done in the institutional context to help businesses?
“We need decision-making capacity and speed, but our democracies, on the contrary, are old and bogged down by the gangrene of guarantees. Furthermore, 30% of our debt is in the hands of foreigners who have decided that Italian politicians must be incompetent, otherwise they would use that debt as a weapon in their favor. And I don't agree with the sale of public assets because we should have the certainty of not falling back into this debt situation. In short, if even the only valuable asset we have is sold off, what remains after that? I would suggest a long-term rental: the Alps, the Colosseum, Pompeii!”.
Optima's investment in cinema (with the production of PIF's debut film "The Mafia kills only in summer" which is enjoying great success with critics and audiences) and in culture in general, how does it fit into your strategy of company?
“If we offer services and products exclusively related to current needs, at some point our growth ends. If our market is shrinking, how can we imagine Optima in the future? Expansion into foreign markets is subject to very long times, while cultural fruition is immediate and the amount of culture that one can consume in one's life is potentially unlimited. Through art and culture you have a strong vision of the world!”.
