Since its establishment,
almost thirty years ago, the company has had a clear priority: to create
software that is safe and, at the same time, simple to use. For this reason,
before starting to create new software for medium and large firms, the company always
dedicates itself to something that is sometimes overlooked but essential:
listening to its customers. Profile of the Italian company that
develops IT solutions capable of beating those of international giants.
Giampaolo Colletti interviews Enrico Clerici, Alessandro Trionfini and Riccardo Polesel, Chairman, CEO and Marketing Manager of X DataNet, respectively, for FARE INSIEME
of Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
“Good programmers know what to write, the best programmers know what to rewrite”. Eric Steven Raymond, American computer scientist and
blogger, repeated it like a mantra. And basically this
concept is the perfect synthesis to describe X DataNet, an IT company with
offices in Mirandola and Rome that has been active on the market for
twenty-seven years and that in the last ten years, i.e. since the 2012
earthquake in Emilia, has managed to double its employees, turnover and
customers. How did the company manage to do this? By designing and developing
high-performance software for the management of medium or large companies. In
this way their solutions, translated into code, help manage boards of directors
and top management meetings, facilitate the approval of financial statements,
and support corporate operations, such as acquisitions or sales. In short,
thanks to the digitisation of high-level processes, they improve company
management. X DataNet makes software that allows large Italian companies to
simplify and optimise the most delicate and important processes, guaranteeing
ease of use for users and maximum security for customers. An Italian company
that makes software in Italy and that often beats giants also active
internationally.
Profile of the company. To explain this
Emilian success let's go back to the numbers. The company has 65 employees and
has a turnover of over 5 million euros. It operates in various sectors: banking
and finance, utilities and energy, manufacturing, cooperatives. It all began in
1995 with a technical and technological soul, given that the two founders –
Enrico Clerici, today Chairman, and Alessandro Trionfini, today CEO – are
computer scientists. «We made customised, tailor-made, almost sartorial
software. Over time, this technical DNA has evolved thanks to the acquisition
of skills focused on specific markets and business areas, as well as the
collaboration with medium and large Italian companies. We are now an IT company
that makes software to manage sensitive processes. The development of software
solutions is a job that never ends: everything can always be improved. The
market always poses new challenges for those who, like us, provide
technological services with high added value. There are three essential
ingredients for creating solutions that are ever more performing: constantly
increasing one's skills, ensuring great flexibility and listening to the
companies with which one collaborates», says Enrico Clerici. The key to
digitisation is ease of use for users and maximum security for customers. Easy
to say, harder to do. «Creating simple-to-use software is very complex. We
invest time and resources to design our platforms, but also to study their
usability, putting ourselves in the shoes of those who will have to use them.
Ease of use is often a crucial factor when choosing a software. As far as
security is concerned, there is a particular, almost obsessive, attention to
the protection of information, from the design phase of our software to the
analysis of the processes it has to manage. We make use of the support of
external companies, ethical hackers who test our software, carrying out
penetration tests and code checks. Our customers also verify our products, an
activity that we encourage because collaboration is essential to obtain high
levels of safety», explains Alessandro Trionfini.
The role of human capital. Most of the people
who work in X DataNet are programmers, but the company has evolved over the
years by integrating different figures in the commercial area, marketing, human
resources, systems engineering and administration. The future for X DataNet can
be summed up in the continuous transformation of skills. «Research
is essential for an IT company. Each of our software must be improved every
year and this can only be done with constant R&D work by all teams. Just
slow down a bit and the competition becomes fierce even in niche sectors. This
is why we invest a lot of resources in this activity», explains Riccardo Polesel,
Marketing Manager of X DataNet. In the meantime, ten years have passed since
the earthquake that hit the Mirandola area, where the main headquarters are
located. An event that made it possible to demonstrate the strong resilience of
the company and the people who work there. «We never stopped working for our
customers, even when we were forced to operate from containers outside the
company. We had to rethink our organisation and our way of working, deciding to
invest in the development of our own products to offer to the market. This
choice has brought to very significant results, allowing us to grow a lot in these
ten years»,
says Clerici. Today that enduring bond with the Emilian community is expressed
in people. Human capital is the most important thing for a software development
company. Trionfini is convinced of that. «We are from Mirandola, Emilian and Italian,
and we have always looked for resources in our area. Many of our managers live
within ten kilometres of our headquarters. The pandemic forced us to look for
resources to hire even outside our territory because we couldn't find any. We
opened our perspective thanks to smart working to find collaborators from other
regions: from Sardinia to Puglia, from Veneto to Tuscany. But the heart of the
company remains in Emilia.»
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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