Milan 12th October 2009 – Columbus Day

Javier Barandica, Aton’s Country Manager for Spain & Portugal, featuring a distinctly Iberian profile,   seems to be dancing about the technological stage of Accenture Innovation Center at Assago Fiori (Milan).

Getting ready for the Board

Javier Barandica Country Manager Iberia

We are in fact hosted by the prestigious and powerful North American multinational (whose Italian subsidiary is reputed to be superb on a worldwide scale) and with whom Aton has formed an encouraging alliance that should enable us to climb the summits of the greatest multinational Companies mainly in the Sector of large-consumption products.

An extraordinary atmosphere is created in the circular room in which the meeting takes place: it reminds in fact of the G8 Summit at L’Aquila with its nine multiple screens surrounding us.

At lunchbreak we have grabbed the chance to do a tour of the Innovation Center, which resembles a realistic projection of a not-so-faraway future. Accenture tends to use this center to convey to its visitors what the customer for large-consumption products might be like in the near future, to gather tendencies, tastes, uses and customs to be translated into tendency-to-purchase. The power of this environment really seems to lie in the intensive use of pervasive computing, that is to say, how to profit from existing technologies in an innovative way. Here it is technology that plays the key role, but what becomes evident is how this technology can help companies to innovate their processes and therefore their competitive skill to remain on the market.

The Board has highlighted the state of Aton’s internal economic situation as there are still signs of distress due to lack of results, but also an encouraging feeling (from backlog & forecast data) of being able to complete the current year in a productive way.

After the presentations by the various Managers, there has been an extremely profitable discussion between Accenture Managers and Domenico Marchetti, Aton’s Corporate Marketing Director, on Aton’s projects for the Fashion Sector. Our solution seems in fact to be absolutely integrable with Accenture proposals, being based on RFID technologies and focusing on two strategic areas for customers: Grey Market’s surfacing in the operations sphere and Shop Experience in the business area.