Business Intelligence in the 4.0 Landscape

It is with great pleasure that I accept Francesco Romei’s (of OTI) invitation to reflect on the strategic role that in company Business Intelligence, above all, as Industry 4.0 really kicks in, has had concerning the rapid acceleration of data availability.
It is important to highlight not only the aspect of increased productivity, which is so obvious as to be no longer under discussion thanks to the adoption of ERP, which practically everyone uses these days. Better to focus on the tools analyzing internal company processes, transforming them into genuine key insight. Thus, targeted decisions can be made, optimizing company profitability.

The Analytics market is in constant growth confirming the necessity to exploit the data being collected to the maximum of its potential. The truth is that the third industrial revolution is now long forgotten and continued economic expansion can only occur when companies appreciate the data driven culture we are now a part of, developing strategic thinking that relates data to production objectives. 4.0 has, and will continue, to deliver technologically advanced tools, however, this is not without risk. One such being the chasm that has opened between SMEs and larger corporations. For example, the Moreali Mario gearing company has set up its smart pathway, laying out clear goals (specific, measurable, reachable, realistic and timed), fully aware of the operational complexity of such a project. The wealth of questions requiring immediate answers, the range of interpretations data can have and the employment of key resources in the management of data quality. These are contexts going beyond mere software and hardware but concerning personnel skills, people needing to analyze and correlate the data in the best way possible. The risk for SMEs, the backbone of the Italian industrial system, is no longer technological but cultural. The challenge, to confirm the extraordinary “perspicacity” of Italian management through the correct exploitation of data.
I’m pleased to give the floor to professor Marco Bocciolone, pro-tempore President of Federtec.