Homepage
What are the parameters by which a company is evaluated? Do we rely on traditional financial indicators, or do we turn to innovative customer satisfaction metrics, or perhaps some productivity indicators? And how can a business leader make the most suitable choices based on these parameters to improve their company’s performance?
These are not questions that have easy and immediate answers. That’s why we’re talking about them with Massimiliano Oleotto, Managing Director and creator of Thauma, the new application designed to “revolutionize” the lives of CEOs, as it will forever change their perception of the company, helping them make timely and informed decisions.
Thauma is, in fact, a virtual butler, supporting the CEO in the challenging task of corporate governance. Like Alfred for Batman, Thauma’s goal is to tirelessly and faithfully assist those involved in governance with whatever is needed for governance.
This goal is achieved by looking primarily at data from business processes, i.e., from a fundamental and complex system like the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning, which we discussed more here).
A huge amount of data that, to be used to its fullest potential for company governance, needs to be synthesized into relevant information and presented as knowledge. Knowledge that, in many cases, is entirely “new” to the CEO and should evoke that “wonder” that is the primary meaning of the Greek term thauma.
An engineer from Udine, an expert in business processes and information systems, Oleotto has understood how important governance has become in SMEs in recent years. He concluded that, at the moment, there are no suitable tools available to support the CEO.
To be more precise, the existing tools are not within reach of SMEs because they have an entry threshold that is sustainable only for large enterprises, which differ from SMEs not only quantitatively but also qualitatively.
How did the idea for Thauma come about?
It originated while I was the Chief Process Officer of the Corvallis Group. I was appointed in 2015 to fill that role and systematize the governance processes of the Group, adopting software that could support that systematization.
The Group had different, sometimes very different, businesses, and it was about directing and coordinating them: not an easy task.
For this system, we decided to integrate two visions:
- That of business processes, given by Panthera, one of the best Italian ERPs.
- That of strategic objectives, developed through a Balanced ScoreCard (BSC) on Qlik Sense, one of the best Business Intelligence (BI) software in the world.
In 2017, the system was active and effectively configured as a CPM (Corporate Performance Management), a very powerful governance tool designed for large enterprises, certainly not for SMEs.
The idea came at that moment. Why not create a CPM for SMEs?
It was about understanding what the problems were that made a CPM unsuitable for SMEs and finding a way to solve them. While the problems were well-known—the implementation of a CPM is too long, expensive, and complex for an SME—the solutions were not as clear.
The essential requirement was to create a software that worked immediately, was economical, and appeared “simple” for the CEO. Today, Thauma exists because we found the solution to all those problems.
However, the solution set Thauma apart from CPMs. Gartner, which followed us through the conceptualization, development, and commercialization of the product, suggested not using the CPM acronym to describe Thauma. Instead, they advised emphasizing its unique identity.
Thauma is, in fact, “Digital Performance Intelligence” (DPI), a fusion of three elements: the intelligence of BI, the performance of Corporate Performance Management, and, above all, the digital aspect of Digital Twin because Thauma is the digital replica of the company tailored for the CEO.
You have entrusted yourself to an expert team for the creation of Thauma. Can we say that it is a “choral” work?
Absolutely, yes. If the idea dates back to 2017, in 2018 there was the conceptualization phase, and the following year the development. Since the concept, and even more so with development, Thauma has been characterized by three areas that require completely different knowledge and experiences.
- The first area is certainly that of knowledge: a reference to the name, Thauma, which in ancient Greek indicates the wonder of knowledge. Using the most authoritative knowledge frameworks and leveraging the expertise of Manfredi Manfrin, we can say that Thauma incorporates all the topics of Business Management.
- The second area is that of technology: software like Thauma would have been unthinkable even just ten years ago because, thanks to the experience of Paolo Coloni, it incorporates “worlds” such as ERP, BI, cloud, apps, and so on, up to AI.
- The third and final area is that of experience: Thauma has focused a lot on User Experience, thanks to the knowledge of Pietro Orciuolo because we understand how complicated the CEO’s life is, and the introduction of Thauma must simplify it, not complicate it further.
There are many other people to mention, starting with our president Matteo Del Sole, who embodies how much the Corvallis Group, now Kauri Group, believed and believes in this initiative. Not to mention our prestigious partners, from those who worked on designing a new fantastic design to those who supported us technically from the beginning.
Concretely, what does Thauma do for the CEO?
At the core of Thauma is the concept of performance, which doesn’t only apply to companies. In fact, the first context that comes to mind when talking about performance is that of sports.
Imagine the CEO as the coach of a sports team:
His task is to set high-level goals for individual matches and the entire tournament, reflecting both the characteristics of the team and those of the opponents.
This is the governance, and Thauma starts here in its support for the CEO: analyzing the competitive context and implementing strategic guidelines.
However, the coach doesn’t just set goals. He must, along with his team, develop them into action plans that need to be implemented game after game, and even before that, action after action.
This is the management, and Thauma continues here in its support for the CEO: synthesizing all business processes, including financial, commercial, operational, and organizational.
It doesn’t end there because Thauma aims to provide new knowledge to the CEO, not just by showing what it knows in new ways but also and above all by showing what it doesn’t know.
In the analogy of the coach, this is what his collaborators do—some are absolutely “traditional,” like the fitness coach or the physiotherapist, while others are absolutely “innovative,” like sports psychologists and match analysts.
This sports analogy was repeated a few days ago during one of our presentations to a group of consultants. On that occasion, Thauma was defined as… the “Fitbit” for businesses!
Can we say that if Thauma became a governance standard for businesses, it could lead Italy and its SMEs towards an increasingly data-oriented future?
Certainly. Thauma aligns with a trend where objective data should guide decisions, and this data needs to be as timely, reliable, complete, and accessible as possible.
Thauma does just that: it processes ERP data daily, summarizes it with proprietary algorithms, presents it according to authoritative knowledge frameworks, and finally, thanks to the cloud, makes it accessible wherever… there’s signal!
If our mission is to assist the CEO in governance, our vision is to provide companies with a tool that goes beyond control and aims for improvement, transparently showing what is and isn’t working in every single piece of data.
From a customer delivery date entered incorrectly in the ERP to the failure to achieve a strategic goal, being aware allows the company to make necessary corrections. Using the examples just mentioned, this could lead to better evaluations of customer service levels or the adjustment of different objectives or action plans.
I would also like to add that the cloud now enables a possibility that was challenging to achieve a few years ago. Gathering the performance data of different companies in one place will allow Thauma, once a “critical mass” of companies is reached and in strictly anonymous form, to compare companies even in areas where it is almost impossible to have a comparison today, such as operational productivity.
