Moving to the Future: Inside Panini’s Digital Transformation

Let's dive right into your new role, which focuses on technology, assessment, and strategy. Can you start by telling us about the importance of technology?

Just one example to nail down the catch-all “technology” word:  fingerprint capture, especially if contactless, when seen in action, is by far the best user experience you can think of. This is even better than face recognition because fingers are not exposed to public, plus a stolen fingerprint does not automatically connect with your identity, as your face does. The odd here is that those devices appear to be the future but never got traction because they are prohibitively expensive, they currently get used to grant access to luxury buildings and few other applications; however, I have seen them tested and NIST is thinking a specific set of regulations just for them. The question is: has this technology to be so costly? Worth digging more. Many other technology topics will certainly be raised by R&D department over time.

That’s intriguing. Let’s talk about your strategy for partnering with startups. How does this fit into Panini's innovation plans?

Innovation is at the heart of our strategy, and partnering with startups will be crucial in doing open innovation and developing solutions so that Panini can be perceived as “something else” than just a device manufacturer. A small AI company I met when I began being a startup mentor has the exact same kind of customers we have, banks and insurances, but they sell data management and AI analysis. They need to grow and extend horizontally, we need to widen our product offer: we definitely need to work together and get mutual benefit, right? Other startups are under scrutiny, some spark is possible and all efforts are in the direction to make it happen.