Mapping financial performances in Italian ICT-related firms via self-organizing maps

In this work, we explore the application of machine learning models (MLM) to the analysis of firms’ performance. To such aim, we consider a bunch of financial indicators on firms operating in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, with attention to enterprises providing ICT related-services. The rationale is to highlight the potential of MLM to exploit the complexity of financial data, and to offer a handy way to visualize the related information. In fact, instead of performing classical analysis, we discuss how to apply to those indicators Self-Organizing Maps-SOMs—that are well suited to manage high dimensional and complex datasets to extract their relevant features. It emerges that SOMs are useful in clustering companies depending on multi-dimensional criteria and in analysing hidden relations in companies’ performances.