CoMETA: more competitiveness thanks to POR CreO

Development of skills and competitiveness with the Regione Toscana support policies

The competitive thrust and the desire of increasing their skills have been a decisive role in recent years and have allowed Cometa company to strengthen itself on the market, despite the difficult economic period started in 2009. Thanks to the POR FESR 2014-2020 Call, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (proposed by Regione Toscana), CoMETA obtained some grants for developing innovative services and for increasing the competitiveness both nationally and internationally, proposing its own growth’s project within the requirements of the Por CreO Program.

bando por creo regione toscana e cometa

The Project

The “Temporary Management e certificazione ambientale” project, which began in June 2016 and ended in May 2017, allowed to undertake a complex path of company growth, from a reality well positioned in the Italian market towards a process of internationalization, with the aim of seeking foreign partnerships, in order to expand its business abroad, to differentiate the customers portfolio and to complete the ISO14001 environmental certification process.

The project contemplated also a staff reorganization, an internal restructuring and the inclusion of a Temporary Manager: this allowed to optimize some processes and procedures so as to achieve better levels of efficiency and flexibility for adapting to the new market needs.

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The project allowed to:

  • Identify and define the critical factors, analyzing business system and the existing relationships
  • Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company, analyzing the positioning on the market so as to define the strategies for commercial development, especially abroad
  • Define the strategy for commercial development of the company on foreign markets, through the searching for new partnerships; since the company is well positioned in the Italian banking market, the strategy identified ways and means of penetrating the following sectors: non-banking sectors in the Italian market (vertical sectors), banking sector in foreign markets and non-banking sectors in foreign markets (vertical sectors)
  • Gain confidence and authority towards company staff by the new manager

The Temporary Manager was involved in the company management, ensuring the continuity of the organization, increasing the existing managerial skills, as well as managing the acceleration of innovation and internationalization process, necessary to compete in the current market.

Project activities concerned the following points:

  1. INITIAL ANALYSIS: it allowed the Temporary Manager to know the company, inserting himself in the specific context and carrying out a market analysis to propose actions and activities.
  2. INTERVENTION PLANNING: starting from the company's mission and vision, a Business Plan was set up as a planning and control tool. The Business Plan indicated the strategic objectives and the main actions to implement for the commercial development abroad, including marketing and communication activities.
  3. ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIES: following a deep discussion with the Management about the strategies currently in place, the new short and medium/long term objectives were defined, reviewing, when necessary, the strategic objectives already planned; the results of this analysis were the definition of the company short term budgets and the drafting of the Business Plan for the medium/long term objectives.
  4. ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL ANALYSIS: a Managerial Control System was designed and implemented, focusing on the measure of the company KPIs and on the reporting of them.
  5. MARKET AND COMPETITION ANALYSIS: a very important aspect was the analysis of the market/environment and of the demand from several points of view (demographic, social, economic), but also the analysis of the market trends and the customer tastes. A study of the competitors was also carried out, evaluating its strengths and weaknesses, strategies and products, in order to seek the best positioning on the market.
  6. ANALYSIS OF THE COMPANY ORGANIZATION: once defined the objectives, the strategies and the methods for penetrating the market, the internal organization was analyzed and it was defined the interventions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the internal processes; interviewing a lot of company employers, it was carried out the SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis and then it was defined the intervention plan to eliminate or reduce some critical issues, according to the company priorities.

The above mentioned activities allowed the Temporary Manager to complete the following tasks:

  • Defining responsibilities and tasks for each role in the internal processes and determining the minimum professional requirements and the training courses of the company staff
  • Applying the elaborated solutions
  • Check effectiveness and efficiency of the applied solutions to validate them
  • Carrying out training courses and coaching activities: the Temporary Manager did team building and problem solving activities to increase the ability of working in a tema. The main and most difficult issue was the coaching of the different sales area managers on one side and the management on the other, in order to obtain a good team play