On September 28, 2026, at Palazzo Turati in Milan, Ermanno Bonifazi, Founder and CEO of Avantune, participated in A&F Live – Building the Country’s Digital Future, an event organized by la Repubblica – Affari & Finanza to explore the challenges shaping Italy’s digital transformation.
The event brought together businesses, institutions, and industry experts to discuss the role of artificial intelligence, data, skills, and infrastructure in advancing the country’s economy.
Small and Digital: What SMEs Need
Ermanno Bonifazi took part in the panel discussion “Small and Digital: What SMEs Need,” alongside Claudio Rorato, Director of the Digital Innovation in SMEs Observatory at Politecnico di Milano. The discussion was moderated by Giulia Cimpanelli, a journalist with la Repubblica.
The conversation focused on how small and medium-sized businesses can use technology as a practical driver of competitiveness.
“The largest company does not win. The fastest one does,” Bonifazi said, summarizing the central message of his contribution. An SME cannot quickly change its size, but it can increase the speed at which it interprets data, makes decisions, and responds to market changes.
The Advantage Does Not Come from Owning Technology
The discussion highlighted a paradox: technology is now widely available, but many tools were designed according to a model in which people were expected to adapt to the software.
Competitive advantage, therefore, does not come simply from owning advanced technology. It comes from integrating that technology into the way a company operates. Even the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence model delivers limited value if it remains disconnected from business data, applications, and operational processes.
True transformation is not about adding more tools. It is about enabling a business to understand what is happening, adapt, and act more quickly.
Building Networks to Compete
The discussion also emphasized the value of collaboration among businesses. In Italy’s manufacturing sector, the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies reaches 76% among companies that operate within business networks, compared with 49% among companies operating independently.
Working within a network allows SMEs to share knowledge and experience, gain easier access to expertise, and approach the innovation capabilities of larger organizations while maintaining their flexibility.
The challenge of digital transformation is therefore not purely technological. It requires strategic vision, new skills, and an organization capable of turning innovation into a continuous process.
One Platform for Moving Faster
This vision guided Avantune in the development of Genialcloud 11, a platform designed to connect business applications, data, and processes within a unified architecture.
With Trinity AI, the artificial intelligence agent integrated into the platform, information can be interpreted within its operational context and used to support people in their activities and decisions, while respecting established roles and permissions.
Avantune’s participation in A&F Live provided an important opportunity to discuss the future of SMEs and a new business model in which technology does not add complexity, but helps organizations become more informed, responsive, and agile.