The Advantageous Ethics

The proliferation of AI (Artificial Intelligence) products in the last year has opened the doors to a series of possible applications aimed at automating processes connected to applications and services rendered on the Cloud.
In particular, our company has recently launched services with the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) formula provided by a software product created in house, called “3FS – 3rd Millennium Fleet System“.
The development of a new “Low Code – No Code” platform identified by the brand: “3P – Proge Power Platform”, which explores innovative forms of involving end users in the creation of management software, is also underway.
For both of the aforementioned supply lines, scenarios of strong innovative value are opening up, made possible by the use of AI, aimed at automating operational support for users, development planning and control, corrective and evolutionary maintenance, the evolution technical-functional and self-checking on the quality of software and services.
The use of the Cloud also requires careful attention to Security, both infrastructural and application, which can also be automated with the tools made available by AI.
From these considerations was born the company decision to invest in the creation of an R&D project that incorporates these automation objectives in a scenario of progressive implementation of increasingly more complex functions, aiming for a goal of complete automation, always under rigorous control over the adoption and compliance with current and future regulations.

Starting from the above scenario, the following R&D actions have been identified to be pursued through experimental development phases:

• Study of the 3FS software product, in particular of its methodological and documentary structuring, in order to understand its contents and proceed to a first optimization phase aimed at making the online Help more efficient and integrating an effective workflow that allows the creation of a hierarchical tree structure where each user is enabled, within their skills, to define the underlying collaborators with their respective authorizations;
  Implementation of advanced functions for predicting future rental needs and automatic planning of vehicle purchases and sales, aimed at satisfying rental needs by optimizing costs through an Automated Rotation module;
  Creation of an automatic responder to user requests, capable of providing solutions to the problems represented and of independently activating second level support if necessary, associated with the constant monitoring of its effectiveness and the generation of evolutionary maintenance tickets addressed to the Team Technical Support in cases of reiteration of requests of the same type;
  Creation of a self-checking process capable of identifying system shortcomings and suggesting possible optimizations and integrations, in a virtuous path of gaining decision-making autonomy, always subjected to the rigorous attention of managers and their approval;
  Introduction of a powerful automatic tool for diagnosing the system’s compliance with the rules dictated on the subject of Privacy and Security, both at an infrastructural and application level, in order to constantly have an alert on any violations and immediate suggestions for their solution ;
  Evolution of the 3P product aimed at integrating automatic tools for planning and controlling development activities supported by AI.

• Scouting of the most popular AI products on the market and analysis of their usability for the purposes of the project objectives.
• Scouting of the most advanced operational research products and analysis of the possible implications of their use for the purposes of the project objectives.
• Execution tests of the selected products and analysis of the results in order to guide the definition of the project standards.
• Creation of a first experimental version of the 3P product.

The planned activities are concentrated on the following points:

• 3FS Improvements, aimed at providing the system with an Authorization Workflow that gives possibilities and guides users in implementing integrated management of authorizations in the 3FS service, in a tree structure in which everyone is enabled to define the underlying collaborators by giving them authorizations within their competences;
• Automated Fleet Rotation based on powerful and innovative mathematical models aimed at optimizing the management of purchases and sales by aiming to use the least expensive or most profitable vehicles, subjecting the results to the scrutiny of interactions with users supported by AI;
• Automated Customer Support which is not limited to the mere interaction of the current chatbots but is capable of providing real first level support to user assistance requests, providing the system with effective, automatically powered Help-on-Line from the detail of the Functional Analysis, solving the simplest cases and activating the User Support Team in the more complex ones; it must be integrated with constant monitoring of its effectiveness, acquiring knowledge of the limits to be overcome from the reiteration of requests and ungiven responses to constantly raise the level of service and, therefore, to identify possible optimizations to propose to the Technical Support Team;
• Self Improvements Algorithm: will be the further evolution of the system, which must be capable of proposing corrections and improvements both in documents and in the software code to be submitted for approval by the Technical Support Team;
• Privacy and Security: in parallel with the milestones set out above, a powerful self-diagnosis tool for compliance with the rules regulating privacy and security must be created, which is not limited to simply reporting violations, but is capable of suggesting the solutions to be submitted to management;
• 3P Improvements: will be the further implementation to be carried out in parallel to the previous ones, which will have to equip the 3P product with automatic activity planning and control algorithms based on the appropriate exploitation of AI.

The new business paradigm is establishing itself; the launch of 3FS and the development of the experimental product 3P attest to the success achieved in the long and complex transformation process fueled by the consistent and courageous investments in R&D in recent years.
Today Proge-Software is a Saas supplier on the Cloud and uses methodological and technological innovations to invent new forms of supply intended to bridge the gap between suppliers and users of information technologies.
This requires a constant commitment to facing the daily challenge of change on an educational level and in the persevering definition of R&D projects, such as those set out above.
But that’s not enough; they must be accompanied by constant process innovation to be incorporated into corporate governance in order to regulate new supplies by defining adequate project management and job order management processes.
The ongoing evolution essentially imposes the need to redefine company processes in which even the back-office functions are strongly revolutionized as a result of the implementation of automatisms that free staff from operations by allocating them to planning, monitoring functions and control.
Therefore, this year too we need to invest in process innovation that leads to organizational renewal and the creation of increasingly advanced automation in management control.

• Innovate production processes based on the use of advanced technologies for the automatic management of workflow and cooperation between functions;
• Continue the elimination of paper flows by transferring the complex operations of insertion, authorization, verification, archiving, consultation and dissemination of information relevant for the purposes of corporate organization to the automatic management of the workflow;
• Constantly align corporate governance with the technical, professional and cultural developments imposed by a market in continuous evolutionary ferment;
• Design automatic tools aimed at planning and controlling supplies, starting from the adequacy of the Security and Privacy management and verification systems.

In recent years the following results have been achieved:

• Restructuring of the company Intranet and migration of already operational procedures included in the company certifications;
• Implementation of marketing and commercial management procedures;
• Implementation of Analytical Accounting and Management Control;
• Creation of “Skills Mapping” as a powerful management tool based on interactive cooperation between the Technical, Commercial and Marketing sectors;
• Creation of the “Offer Evaluation Form” following the flows and procedures defined in the Governance manual;
• Creation of a “Dashboard” for the aggregation of accounting and forecasting data which provides a powerful interactive budgeting and forecasting tool allowing, among other things, the activation of an effective staff incentive policy based on the calculation of the profitability of the orders.

The activities planned for the current year are concentrated on the following points:

• Build business management apps and prototype dashboards aimed at the automatic governance of interactions between sectors, at the monitoring and control of the complex mechanism of the organizational machine, and at the production of interactive reports that integrate data from accounting systems to provide an overview of the situation accounting and finance;
• Drafting the Proge Standards, a document that defines rules and criteria to be followed in the management of software development and infrastructure delivery projects, starting from the collection and description of the requirements, passing through the design and development/implementation of the software/infrastructure and ending with distribution and tracking the use of the product/service;
• Build the Proge Building Blocks, pre-assembled and reusable software components and scripts, both front-end and back-end, which allow to speed up and standardize software and hardware projects, avoiding code duplication and simplifying maintenance;
• Develop the Proge Fast Track, software for rapid prototyping, which facilitates the development of the basic architecture of a software development project and the application of standards and best practices;
• Create the Proge Knowledge Base, a centralized repository for storing acquired skills and experience, which optimizes the re-use of acquired knowledge at company level;
• Implement Proge Training, a training course divided into different areas (Web, Mobile, Cloud, Data & AI, DevOps, Security, etc.) and with different entry points depending on the initial skills, which simplifies professional updating, both of new hires and corporate staff.