(Finance) – The management of family businesses – given the considerable weight of these realities in our country – is a key theme for Italy: hence the need to train increasingly specialized figures. We talked about it with Paolo Roffia, Director of specialization and professional refresher courses in family business management – Department of Management presso the University of Verona which, in the current academic year, among the ad hoc specialization and refresher courses, has also included a new edition of the course in Family Business Management.
The course – explains Roffia – “has been divided into four parts: in this first edition of the module the issues of generational transition are addressed, then, in the second, the issues relating to administration and control, in the third module there is space for the theme of internationalization and finally in the fourth module, the themes of business plan and finance.
Family businesses”they are a huge number, it’s difficult to make a statistic, but at least the 70% of businesses – considering all dimensions – they have the nature of a family business”, the Professor further observes, underlining that “the main themes of these are themes that have characterizations, because the presence of the family with its conditioning role or the influence of the dimensions that these family businesses often have, certainly generate particular problems. The the profile of the skills that enter these companies, for example, must be built and valorised, which means that they have particular characteristics for which it was decided to propose a targeted training offer”.
Among the topics covered is that of generational change: What are the challenges and opportunities?
The generational transition – explains Roffia – “is an obligatory stage for many companies over the next few years, statistically, based on the average duration of the companies, many of these have now exceeded 30 yearsi, which means that we are approaching a need for generational transition. It goes without saying that it is a theme that must then be renewed over time, because each generational transition must add something to the company, not only because the age of the people within it must succeed them, they must alternate, but also because the moment of alternation it is also the moment in which things are understood new, new ideas and also business models that are rethought and proposed in a different key”.
The course is made up of three other modules, what are the next steps?
“The second module will start very soon, so there is still one week to register (it is possible to find useful information on the website www.corsogif.it): the theme is that of administration and control and in this perimeter we will touch on the issues of budgeting and management control, we will try, in particular, to appreciate techniques that help companies improve their governance. In the following ones, however, we will alternate a module dedicated to creation with the form of a start-up or of the expansion of business lines, then the construction of a business plan, finally, a fourth and final module dedicated to the topic of internationalisation And of the digitalisation of processes, which encompasses everything that has been included on the topic of IT in the corporate world: from the fact of creating digital processes, we have seen that during the pandemic this was a necessity for everyone, but it was also an opportunity to take a leap into digitalisation that must be completed, there are many opportunities, Industry 4.0, we now have Industry 5, the time has come to also have this approach to digital information”, concludes Roffia.