In Italy alone, over 60% of large companies hinge their strategies for success on digitalization, indicating a lack of awareness and perspective of what digital transformation actually means. Investment isn’t the issue, but there’s a culture of thinking that technological change alone, rather than organizational change, creates digital transformation, which is a big first mistake to make on a path to evolution and modernization.
“Whatever your needs are, the technology is there; that’s not the problem,” says Tommaso Pagnini, CIO of global aluminium processor Profilglass. “You might evaluate which type of cloud to choose or whether an AI application is useful, but the real issue is management and process, and how to effectively address challenges by putting the focus on people.”
For Marco Foracchia, CIO of AUSL, thelocal health authority that administers services in Italy’s Reggio Emilia province, the biggest mistake is not thinking strategically. “Taking many unrelated steps without an overall vision gets you nowhere,” he says. “You risk buying ICT systems randomly and accumulating technologies, and losing the possibility of grafting wider logic into strategies for cybersecurity, privacy, cloud, and AI. These aren’t individual purchases, but transversal elements of a broad strategy.”
