Transforming data in value: the Loccioni Case

For B2B companies whose core business is supplying components or services to other businesses, building relationships with customers grounded in trust is absolutely indispensable. This relational dimension is especially critical in the sector of mechanical or industrial engineering. The capacity to provide personalized solutions that go far above and beyond the needs articulated by the client: this is the main driver for constructing a solid, long-standing relationship. And within the framework of this relationship, people play a central role in ensuring sustainability and the wellbeing of the planet.

To guarantee quality, efficiency and sustainability in production process and customer care, an ecosystem is needed – a knowledge company – where ideas, people and technologies are tightly integrated thanks to an entrepreneurial approach anchored on trust-based relationships. An aim that is best realized only when the company manages to introduce appropriate systems for internal monitoring and control.

This is what makes “transforming data into value” possible: an imperative that Enrico Loccioni has embraced and achieved. This entrepreneur, who comes from the Italian region of Le Marche, has been at the helm of the Group that carries his name since 1968.

Back in the 1970s the decision was made at Loccioni to center the activity of the company on quality, and to invent systems and tools for measuring it. At that crucial moment in time, concepts were emerging such as just-in-time, lean factory, and total quality management. For the Group, this marked the strategic transition from the production of industrial electrical systems to testing and monitoring industrial products and components, a turning point that led to a Copernican revolution, in which monitoring and measuring became the company’s new mantra.

From here followed an attempt to take this new approach to work and to the core business offering and apply it in the company’s factory too, a first step in envisioning Loccioni as the knowledge company it would eventually become. So in the late 1980s a study on organizational wellbeing was commissioned, with the aim of revealing any criticalities or areas where there was room for improvement in the Loccioni system. Following intense work “analyzing the data and monitoring and measuring results,” eight key parameters were identified: interest in work, the physical work environment, work flow and fluidity, information on/for work, interdepartmental relations, interpersonal relations, relations with hierarchy, and corporate image.

So we can see that to manage the Loccioni ecosystem, the essential element is to create a work environment founded on trust and positive interpersonal relationships, with an eye to motivating everyone to make a proactive contribution. Employees are replaced by knowledge workers, who may actually become knowledge players: willing to continually put themselves to the test for their own sake and for their future, and for that of the company ecosystem.

To ensure the utmost flexibility and dynamicity within the company while preserving its origins, which are rooted in the local territory, recruiting processes follow two general directions. The first is to hire a young workforce capable of thinking outside the box, giving the organization flexibility and dynamism. The second is to establish a solid connection with local universities as sources of knowledge and innovation, without neglecting to expand the network to other prestigious national and international institutions as well.

Along its evolutionary path, Loccioni has reconfigured itself more and more as an organization operating in the knowledge industry. In fact, the Group’s key competitive factor is knowledge, the ability to learn and to anticipate market trends. Over the years, this approach has enabled Loccioni to enter into ground-breaking new sectors such as environmental monitoring and ICT.

Loccioni’s values and ethics can be summed up in four cornerstone principles that give direction to the activity of the Group and the people who work there: imagination, energy, responsibility and tradinnovation. Building a solid consensus around these values is what forms the foundations of the company’s success, as evidenced by the high levels of satisfaction among all personnel. In the early 2000s, in fact, Loccioni counted among the top hundred Great Places to Work in Italy for six years; in 2014 the Group placed third in the Best Workplaces Italia ranking in the category reserved for companies with fewer than 500 employees; in 2020 Enrico Loccioni was named Entrepreneur for the Common Good. Further proof of how a company can manage data – for itself and for others – to realize greater value, as long as this value can actually be measured and shared to benefit the collective well-being.

• Placing quality at the center of business activity is a factor that can contribute to sustainability and resilience in the long term. But quality doesn’t just mean ‘talking the talk’; instead pursuing quality calls for developing dedicated management systems and monitoring indicators.
• Control and monitoring systems can be used effectively not only to measure production processes and financial results, but also to gauge employee satisfaction. The resulting data can serve as the starting point for identifying new directions to follow to build the future.
• Investing in a young, talented workforce guarantees the organization an internal perspective that is flexible and dynamic. This is a way to anticipate market trends and break into emerging sectors ahead of the competition.