The targeted approach to cloud and data CIOs need for ROI gains

Migration to the cloud, data valorization, and development of e-commerce are areas where rubber sole manufacturer Vibram has transformed its business as it opens up to new markets. It’s a change fundamentally based on digital capabilities.

“Our digital transformation has coincided with the strengthening of the B2C online sales activity and, from an architectural point of view, with a strong migration to the cloud,” says Vibram global DTC director Alessandro Pacetti. “Online will become increasingly central, with the launch of new collections and models, as well as opening in new markets, transacting in different currencies, and using in-depth analytics to make quick decisions.”

Vibram certainly isn’t an isolated case of a company growing its business through tools made available by the CIO. Emmelibri Group, a subsidy of Italian publishing holding company Messaggerie Italiane, is moving applications to the cloud as part of a complete digital transformation with a centralized IT department.

“Data is the heart of our business, and its centralization has been fundamental for the group,” says Emmelibri CIO Luca Paleari. “We’re an IT company that’s very integrated into the business in terms of applications, and we put innovation at the center. We’re in publishing, but it’s the accompanying services that differentiate us on the market; the technology component is what gives value to our business.”

The rise of the cloud continues

Global enterprise spend on cloud infrastructure and storage products for cloud deployments grew nearly 40% year-over-year in Q1 of 2024 to $33 billion, according to IDC estimates. Much of this growth is driven by investments in AI technologies, and IDC also expects cloud infrastructure spend to increase 26% compared to 2023.

In Italy alone, according to the most recent Cloud Transformation Observatory from Milan’s Polytechnic University, the cloud market grew by 24% in 2024 compared to 2023, achieving the highest increase recorded in the last six years, mostly because of public and hybrid cloud. And in another survey conducted by public scientific-tech university Politecnico di Milano, 84% of large Italian companies say they’ve migrated some or all critical data related to core business activities to the cloud.

CIOs support the core business

With cloud forming the foundation of digital transformation at Vibram, the company, always active in B2B, decided a few years ago to increasingly address the consumer by expanding its B2C activity, developing a new e-commerce site and improving all digital touchpoints to reach the customer. Led by Pacetti, the company was able to reduce many variables in a complex system, like online sales and payments, data analysis, and cybersecurity.

“We chose to go with a few technological partners to help us support the many complexities,” he says, referencing Adyen technology to manage online sales and financial flows, obtain customer insights, and protect the business with cybersecurity systems. As a result, the customer experience has vastly improved once Vibram began accepting all payment methods with main currencies.

Vibram has also switched to SAP S/4HANA to better manage the entire B2B and B2C supply chain, while Adyen harmonizes different products in the cloud.

“I always try to push for improvement and simplification,” says Pacetti. “We share the vision here that technology not only facilitates business, but also internal processes and people’s work.”

In the case of Emmelibri, the transition to SAP S/4HANA prompted an approach to a more complete cloud migration, including core business applications.

“SAP S/4HANA in the RISE version has more innovations and features than the on-premise version,” says Paleari. “For the first time, it presented us with the opportunity to adopt the cloud for a system that’s not an accessory, but core to the operation of the company. We analyzed our application landscape and, due to the principle of data gravity, we decided not only to move SAP to the cloud, but to evaluate how to migrate the other systems as well.”

SAP’s migration, in fact, has pushed Emmelibri to bring all the other applications that revolve around it to the public cloud, such as analytics systems, Tableau with its database, and Snowflake.

The new data frontier: AI and DaaS

Emmelibri uses data as a source of business, and a visualization tool like Tableau can be an important organizational choice, says Paleari. Tableau is also made available to internal users of the Messaggerie Italiane group, as well as external customers to conduct data analysis and combine them with data from other sources. 

“Snowflake has also made data management much easier for us,” Paleari adds. “We can share and acquire the data we need, and we’re also evaluating the use of DaaS. In this case, IT works hand in hand with internal analytics experts. Finally, we’re reflecting on the opportunities offered by data monetization, with all the implications and precautions necessary to protect data privacy. The decision will be made, of course, in agreement with the business.”

AI and DaaS are part of the pool of technologies that Pacetti also draws on, and the company also uses AI provided by Microsoft, both with ChatGPT and Copilot. Plus, AI has been integrated into the e-commerce site to support product research and recommendations. But there’s an even more essential area for Pacetti.

“With the end of third-party cookies, AI is now essential to exploit the little data we can capture from the internet user browsing who accept tracking,” he says. “We use Google’s GA4 to compensate for missing analytics data, for example, by exploiting data from technical cookies.”

Similarly, he finds it very useful to use DaaS for cybersecurity and fraud prevention purposes, working with select providers to help identify any sites that sell fakes, or market the brand’s products on grey markets.

“Like all companies, we depend on data provided by big tech, but for specific activities, DaaS is an important solution to combat activities that can damage our business,” he says.

An innovation for CIOs: measuring IT with KPIs

CIOs discuss sales targets with CEOs and the board, cementing the IT and business bond. But another even more innovative aspect is to not only make IT a driver of revenues, but also have it measure IT with business indicators. This is a form of advanced convergence achieved by following specific methodologies. Sondrio People’s Bank (BPS), for example, adopted business relationship management, which deals with translating requests from operational functions to IT and, vice versa, bringing IT into operational functions. BPS also adopts proactive thinking, a risk-based framework for strategic alignment and compliance with business objectives.

“When IT converges with business, you don’t just evaluate the good functioning of IT, like how many servers or endpoints are managed in the company, but you also measure the IT initiative with business indicators,” explains Stefano Ernesto Garancini, manager in the IT governance team at BPS. “For example, IT builds an application that allows you to sell a company service or product. Consequently, you measure not only whether the application works correctly, but how many products are sold thanks to the application, how many human resources are involved, how much time is reduced along the distribution chain, and other similar parameters. This way, the IT initiative has business objectives and indicators, allowing you to monitor target achievement and activate action plans in the event these targets aren’t achieved.” 

The big change that the CIO and his team must embrace in this kind of practice is that the lifecycle of their activity becomes broader than the classic one of an IT-only initiative. After IT has created an application according to the established methods and costs, and with the desired user experience result, it doesn’t stop there. It goes beyond to also achieve business objectives that have a longer time horizon than IT development. Profound changes, after all, require accompanying change management across the enterprise.