An IT Infrastructure for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises

Willing to Compete in the Global Market

Francesco Pilotti

, Gaetanino Paolone

, Daniele Di Valerio

, Martina Marinelli

, Roberto Cocca

and Paolino Di Felice

3 a

Gruppo SI S.c.a.r.l., 64100 Teramo, Italy

Noro 2 S.r.l., Via Roma 215, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy

Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy

paolino.difelice@univaq.it

Keywords:

SME, Horizontal Alliance, Vertical Alliance, Physical Customer, Digital Customer, Digital Network, Digital

Platform, Digital Transformation.

Abstract:

Context: Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the economy of most countries.

There is large evidence in the literature that digitalisation improves the market performance of enterprises

and, as a consequence, it helps the growth of their businesses. Aims: The present position paper sketches

the authors’ vision about an IT infrastructure for SMEs willing to compete in the global market. Method:

A literature review is conducted on relevant topics concerning SMEs. In light of the published studies, two

factors are essential for the survival of SMEs in the global market: (a) ally themselves with SMEs operating

in the same market segment; (b) offer an amazing shopping experience to their customers. Results: The

pillar of the proposal is the notion of Digital Network (DN), i.e., a network of collaborating SMEs physically

distributed over a territory, which share the objective of selling goods and/or services to potential consumers

through a digital platform. We envision the availability of a “generator” of DNs as the main pillar for helping

SMEs. Each instance returned by the generator consists of two integrated portals: the SMEs Portal and the

Customer portal. The present study provides preliminary ﬁndings that give substance to the soundness of the

started project.

1 INTRODUCTION

“Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the

backbone of Europe’s economy. They represent 99%

of all businesses in the EU. They employ around 100

million people, account for more than half of Europe’s

GDP and play a key role in adding value in every sec-

tor of the economy.”

In Italy, for example, there are

about 3.7 million SMEs that employ 11.7 million per-

sons

. “SMEs are made up of enterprises which em-

ploy fewer than 250 persons and which have an an-

nual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million, and/or

an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43

million.”

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3552-0199

https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes.en

https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/38662/attach

ments/16/translations/en/renditions/pdf

Deﬁnition based on Article 2 of the An-

nex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC

In our world of emergent and continuous changes,

all companies today, and SMEs in particular, in or-

der to be competitive must equip themselves with IT

technologies and adopt new information processes ca-

pable of favoring the sharing of resources and the

engagement of all corporate stakeholders, including

their customers.

(Fletcher and Grifﬁths, 2020), in their opinion

paper about digital transformation during lockdown,

stated that: (a) organisations must improve their digi-

tal maturity, (b) less digitally mature organisations are

more fragile and ﬁnally (c) organisations with higher

levels of digital maturity are generally more ﬂexible.

Unfortunately, implementing the digital transfor-

mation runs into multiple hostile factors, among

which the multiplicity and complexity of the software

solutions required for digitalization stand out. The

development of different types of software applica-

(https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/42921).

768

Pilotti, F., Paolone, G., Di Valerio, D., Marinelli, M., Cocca, R. and Di Felice, P.

An IT Infrastructure for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises Willing to Compete in the Global Market.

DOI: 10.5220/0010476907680775

In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2021) - Volume 2, pages 768-775

ISBN: 978-989-758-509-8

tions often requires a team of analysts of the “busi-

ness model” and a team of programmers who imple-

ment what the ﬁrst modeled. The number of human

resources to be involved is, in general, conspicuous

and with a high professional proﬁle, factors which

translate into high costs. Costs that SMEs are un-

able to afford. In response to the conﬂicting intent of

facilitating the Business-IT Alignment of companies

without increasing the costs associated with the pur-

chase, maintenance and management of the software,

efforts are being multiplied towards the identiﬁcation

of innovative methods for the development of soft-

ware solutions for implementing the digital transfor-

mation. The work (Sanchis et al., 2020) emphasises

the role of the low-code paradigm as an enabler of

digital transformation in the Manufacturing Industry;

while (Paolone et al., 2020) is a contribution about the

low-code development of software solutions. “Low-

code application platforms are expected to remain the

largest component of the low-code development tech-

nology market through 2022, increasing nearly 30%

from 2020 to reach $5.8 billion in 2021.”

This position paper summarises the authors’ opin-

ion about (a) an IT organizational model thought

to act as the engine of the digital transformation of

SMEs towards the outside world and (b) an IT infras-

tructure that implements the organizational model.

The latter implements the low-code paradigm.

The remaining part of the paper is structured as

follows. Section 2 discusses the kind of relationship

SMEs should establish with competing ﬁrms (i.e.,

with the SMEs operating in the same business area;

e.g., agri-food, pharmaceutical, ...) and with the cus-

tomers, in light of the relevant background studies.

Moreover, the section recalls a recent published study

about digital platforms, that is the interface between

producers and consumers. Section 3 is about our vi-

sion; it is consistent with the state of the art on the

background topics for the study. Conclusions and a

look at the future work are the subject of Section 4.

2 BACKGROUND

Compared with other enterprises, SMEs are con-

fronted with a unique set of issues when competing

in the globalized market where operate, in a man-

ner almost hegemonic, giants such as Amazon. Many

studies agree on the need for SMEs to perform within

a (collaborative) network to compensate their small

Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-

releases/2021-02-15-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-low-

code-development-technologies-market-to-grow-23-

percent-in-2021 (accessed on February 2021).

dimension and, hence, to overcome the issue, (e.g.,

(Fariselli et al., 1999; Rehman, 2016; Naeem et al.,

2016; Zoia et al., 2018; O’Dwyer and Gilmore, 2018;

Antoldi and Cerrato, 2020; Dhaundiyal and Cough-

lan, 2020; Benhayoun et al., 2020)).

The present section provides a closer look at the

motivations behind the studies that have investigated

the needs for SMEs to perform within networks.

Moreover, the section recalls a recent published study

about digital platforms. There is large evidence in

the literature that digitalisation improves the market

performance of enterprises and, as a consequence, it

helps the growth of their businesses. The interface

between producers and consumers is the digital plat-

form.

In (Varadarajan and Cunningham, 1995), two

types of alliances are described: “horizontal” and

“vertical”. Within the framework of this paper, we

keep the same names with the following meaning.

Horizontal alliances involve two or more SMEs oper-

ating in the same business area (e.g., agri-food, phar-

maceutical, ...) for achieving common goals (Figure

1); while vertical alliances concern the interactions

between the SMEs, part of the network, and their sup-

pliers and potential customers (Figure 2). The refer-

ences to the state of the art is divided into two sub-

sections. The ﬁrst one concerns horizontal alliances

among SMEs, while the second concerns e-commerce

for the SMEs.

Figure 1: Sketch of the horizontal alliance among SMEs.

2.1 The Need for Horizontal Alliances

According to research ﬁndings, SMEs should enter

alliances for a variety of reasons including the shar-

ing of resources, skills and capabilities, access to

new markets, reduced lead time for deliver, achiev-

ing economies of scale through joint purchase and

reduced stocks, built joint information system, gain-

An IT Infrastructure for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises Willing to Compete in the Global Market

769

Figure 2: Sketch of the vertical alliance between SMEs,

customers and suppliers.

ing legitimacy and mitigating risk. (Rehman, 2016),

for example, says that SMEs’ network alliances pos-

itively inﬂuence ﬁrms’ labour productivity, innova-

tion performance, and product/process innovation.

(Naeem et al., 2016) have shown that the collabora-

tion among enterprises improves the decision-making

capability of the members of the collaborative net-

work. The ﬁndings of (Majid et al., 2020) suggest

that the network capability: (a) enhances SMEs’ cre-

ativeness through synergetic actions with their part-

ners; (b) is a unique and powerful predictor of the

strategic ﬂexibility of SMEs. The latter “refers to

quick reformulation of strategies, alignment of prod-

uct/services with market and introduction of advanced

promotional campaigns.”

2.2 The Need for Vertical Alliances

It wasn’t too long ago when every business claimed

that the key to winning customers was in the qual-

ity of the product or service they deliver. But, things

have changed. Now, an even more important success

factor has appeared: providing the best customer ex-

perience. (Batat, 2019) rephrased this point as fol-

lows: “today consumers increasingly buy experiences

rather than goods or services”. Coherently, Batat re-

places the 7Ps of the old marketing (i.e., Product,

Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Phys-

ical evidence) with 7Es (Experience, Exchange, Ex-

tension, Emphasis, Empathy, Emotional touchpoints,

Emic/Etic process), each one focused on thinking ex-

perientially. In other words, Batat suggests that the

marketers change their approach to generating de-

mand.

“Phygital” is the merging of the digital and the

physical world. Implementing the phygital metaphor

companies can design suitable, emotional, and prof-

itable customer experiences including both ofﬂine and

online digital experiences; hence meeting users’ ex-

pectations. Creating a highly personalized and engag-

ing experience is a precondition in order to generate

enduring customer loyalty.

2.2.1 Loyalty Programs

Loyalty reward programs are a proven way to attract

new consumers and retain the existing ones. More-

over, there is evidence that loyalty programs allow to

build longer, stronger and deeper relationships with

customers, e.g., (Bolton et al., 2000). Another ad-

vantage of having loyal customers is that they play an

active role in word-of-mouth communication, (Lacey

and Morgan, 2008), a type of communication largely

trusted by people, that very often take decisions based

on the opinion of others who have already bought the

same product. Through loyalty programs companies

can create the database of their consumers and their

purchasing behavior. Such a database is a precious

intangible assets for them. In fact, querying it al-

lows understanding the customer’s needs and behav-

ior. Such information helps drive sales by tailoring

offerings and promotions to their expectations.

As pointed out by (G

orajski and Machowska,

2019), “there is evidence that retaining current cus-

tomers is much cheaper for a company than acquiring

new ones”. On the point, (Gallo, 2014) says that it is

from 5 to 25 times cheaper to retain a customer than

to acquire a new one, depending on the industry.

2.3 An IT-platform Conceptual Model

Digital platforms are a pervasive technology.

Through digital platforms companies connect with

people, improve awareness of their brands, inﬂuence

consumer’s attitudes, collect feedback from them,

improve products and services on sale and, at last,

increase their incomes. Last but not least, digital

platforms are transforming the ways in which prod-

ucts and services are produced and consumed. As

a consequence a large body of research has been

devoted to this topic. (Tiwana, 2014; Sun et al., 2015;

Parker et al., 2016; de Reuver et al., 2017; Asadullah

et al., 2018; Hein et al., 2019; Hein et al., 2020) is an

incomplete list of recent papers the reader may refer

to. Scholars from various disciplines have adopted

different perspectives about digital platforms. The

consequence is the lack of a common understanding

(both in research and industry) about the meaning

of the term platform, even when it is related to a

speciﬁc domain. This is the case, for instance, of the

IT domain, as pointed out by (Sun et al., 2015).

Very recently, (DiValerio et al., 2020) investi-

gated the current status of research related to dig-

ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

770

ital platforms in order to identify their distinguish-

ing “dimensions” and then, come up with a sound

deﬁnition for the IT-platform concept. That study

brought them to the selection of the IT-platform con-

ceptual model given by (Sun et al., 2015) (Fig-

ure 3) together with the linked deﬁnition they pro-

posed: “An IT-platform is deﬁned as comprised of

a technological base on which complementary add-

ons can interoperate, following standards and allow-

ing for transactions amongst stakeholders, within the

platform-centric ecosystem.” The six concepts (called

dimensions in (Sun et al., 2015)), part of the previous

deﬁnition, are brieﬂy recalled below.

Figure 3: An IT-platform conceptual model (Sun et al.,

2015).

The technological base is the foundation that allows

the development of add-ons. A standard is a set of

rules enabling developers to interact with the techno-

logical base. An add − on is a software module that

connects to the technological base to add functional-

ity. Interoperability allows the interaction between a

technological base and the add-ons. Transactions de-

note the interactions within an IT-platform “ecosys-

tem”. Governance concerns policies, structures, pro-

cesses, and mechanisms involved in managing an IT-

platform.

“Ecosystem” is a further concept developed

around digital platforms (Tiwana, 2014). A digital

platform ecosystem consists of two major elements:

the platform and the complementary add-ons. The

ecosystem comprises platform owners, developers,

and consumers.

3 OUR VISION

In light of the studies mentioned in the previous sec-

tion, two factors are essential for the survival of SMEs

in the global market: (a) ally themselves with SMEs

operating in the same market segment, (b) offer an

amazing shopping experience to their customers.

This section describes an IT infrastructure for

SMEs based on the notion of “Digital Network” de-

ﬁned as follows. We call Digital Network (DN) a

network of collaborating SMEs physically distributed

over a territory (for instance, a region, a province or

a state), which share the objective of selling goods

(e.g., agri-food products, artefacts, etc.) and/or ser-

vices to potential consumers through a digital plat-

form. We claim that by implementing a DN, SMEs

wishing to operate in the digital economy will be able

to make their products/services known to a large num-

ber of customers and retaining them over time. Ac-

quiring users (some of whom will become customers)

has a cost, both in the digital and in the real economy,

which can be very high. This aspect is particularly

critical for SMEs, notoriously plagued by limited in-

vestment capacity.

Figure 4 shows our instantiation of the platform

conceptual model of Figure 3. The Add-ons of the

DN Technological Base are a Mobile App (Android

and iOs) (below called DgNet), the e-Commerce sub-

system, and the Customer Satisfaction component.

Figure 5 shows the components of the Technological

Base. Each component is a portal.

The SMEs portal offers support to SMEs for the

activities related to the horizontal alliance, while the

other portal offers support to the activities related

to the vertical alliance. The SMEs portal is de-

voted to the internal communication among the SMEs

and, hence, it supports the horizontal collaboration

among them; while the Customers portal allows to

establish a link with the external stakeholders, no-

tably, the potential consumers. The latter portal ex-

hibits the goods and/or services; moreover, it includes

an e-Commerce engine integrated with the Amazon

store. The database, shared by both portals, stores

data about customers, the log of their transactions,

and their reviews/comments over time.

Figure 4: The conceptual model of the DN Technological

platform.

In the following we assume the availability of a gen-

erator of DNs (let call it DNetGenerator) that imple-

ments the low-code paradigm. DNetGenerator con-

stitutes a tangible help for the SMEs because it re-

An IT Infrastructure for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises Willing to Compete in the Global Market

771

Figure 5: The DN Technological Base.

duces the level of IT skills that SMEs must have to

establish horizontal and vertical alliances.

Each DN instance returned by DNetGenerator

consists of the two integrated portals of Figure 5.

3.1 About the SMEs Portal

Let us refer to an arbitrary number of SMEs, ho-

mogeneous with each other (i.e., ﬁrms operating in

the same business area and, hence, direct competi-

tors) which, by hypothesis, are interested in estab-

lishing a horizontal alliance to pursue common ob-

jectives. Each of those SMEs insists on a speciﬁc

territory deﬁned as the union of the geographical ar-

eas served by their (physical) Point of Sales (PSs), the

latter meant as (physical) stores or professional stud-

ies. Each allied SME, using the instance returned by

DNetGenerator, will be able to create its own Vir-

tual Showcase through which it will describe itself,

its PSs (a web page for each PS) and exhibit the prod-

ucts/services it wants to sell (one web page for each

product/service). An integral part of the DN is the

DgNet mobile app through which all the SMEs of the

network and the virtual showcases of their PSs can be

reached.

Each of the allied SMEs will have to undertake

to inform the customers who visit one of their PSs

(for this reason hereafter called physical customers),

of the existence of the DN and, hence, of the pos-

sibility offered to them to buy products/services also

online using DgNet. In the following, we call digi-

tal customers the latter category of consumers. This

active role of the SMEs towards their physical cus-

tomers is decisive in the promotion, without costs, of

the DN, that is in expanding the audience of poten-

tial customers of their products/services to an audi-

ence equal to the sum of the physical customers of

the various SMEs part of the alliance.

3.1.1 A Reward Policy

To overcome the distrust of SMEs to share their phys-

ical customers with the other SMEs of the DN, our

idea is the following. Each PS (let say Q) of a generic

SME (let say W ) adhering to the DN is associated

with a QR code. Each physical customer (let say C) of

PS Q of SME W introduced to the DN by W remains

associated with Q, and hence with W (brieﬂy, W is the

owner of C), by linking he/she to the QR code of Q by

means of a functionality of DgNet. In this way, cus-

tomer C remains permanently linked to his/her owner

regardless of what product/service he/she will buy

online in future and where among the many virtual

showcases exhibited by the SMEs of the DN. The

delivery of what has been purchased online can take

place at home or at any PS of one of the SMEs be-

longing to the DN, at any time.

A possible method on which to base the distribu-

tion of proﬁts between the SMEs adhering to the DN

for each product/service sold is illustrated below.

Legend of notations:

m margin

sP selling Price

c (total) cost

cN cost of DN

cS cost of the Seller member (a SME)

mPR margin of the Participating Retailer (a SME)

mOPC margin of the Owner of the Physical

Customer

pSP percentage of the sP withheld by the DN.

The cost of the DN (cN) comprises the cost of sus-

taining the network and the cost for campaigns of con-

sumer loyalty.

The following equations hold:

m=sP-c

c=cN+cS

m=mPR+mOPC

cN=pSP×sP

m=sP×(1-pSP)-cS

sP×(1-pSP)-cS= mPR+mOPC

mPR=sP×(1-pSP)-cS-mOPC

mOPC=sP×(1-pSP)-cS-mPR

From equations above, it follows that mPR<m, i.e., it

is a margin lower than that provided by a direct sale.

However, this margin comes from a digital customer

that the allied SME would not have reached without

the DN. Also mOPC<m, but in any case it is greater than

zero for a transaction that did not involve it directly

and for which the SME had no cost. In summary, we

can notice that each SME adhering to the DN has two

earning opportunities, mutually non-exclusive: one

direct and the other indirect. This double potential

advantage is the best guarantee that the collaboration

between the SMEs adhering to the DN might be last-

ing.

3.2 About the Customers Portal

The virtual showcases of each PS of the SMEs part

of the DN are consistent each other. From the cus-

tomer point of view this is important because it pro-

ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

772

vides them the same experience at each PS of the DN.

IKEA is a relevant example. Visitors of any IKEA

store around the world get the same experience. And

the pay-off is huge. Not only IKEA is one of the

most beloved companies in the world, but in the ﬁscal

year 2019, the company generated a global revenue

exceeding 41 billion Euros worldwide

A peculiarity of the customers portal is that of im-

plementing the emerging phygital paradigm. Imple-

menting the phygital paradigm allows SMEs to offer

to their consumers the experience they are looking for.

No company is so perfect in the delivery of their

products/services that dissatisfaction (the source of

complaints) does not exist. In this context the well-

known saying: “No news, good news” is not always

true. So, the correct approach from SMEs that aim

playing online lengthily is to implement a robust Cus-

tomer service. Handling complaints includes the fol-

lowing three steps: (a) collecting them; (b) analyz-

ing them, and (c) responding appropriately (i.e., over-

coming the underlying issue).

In (Farnsworth et al., 2019), authors report that

“for every complaint expressed, there are over 25 un-

registered complaints. Many dissatisﬁed customers

just quietly take their business elsewhere. [...] Fur-

thermore, a customer with a complaint is likely to tell

others about his complaint.” Organizations that are

truly committed to delivering an effective customer

service have to providing them opportunities to com-

plain. The DgNet mobile app and the websites of

the associated SMEs are the two channels that must

be implemented within the DN to encourage (digital)

customers to write their comments that, from these

collecting point, can then automatically be redirected

into the DN’s database (Figure 5).

Such a database is a precious intangible assets for

the SMEs, since, by querying it, it is possible to ex-

tract customers complaints and take appropriate ac-

tions to reply to them. In addition, the availability of

such kind of data allows the implementation of quan-

titative methods as an alternative to qualitive ones. In

fact, by querying the database over long periods of

time it is possible to build statistics useful to get a

correct vision of what is going wrong with the offered

products/services.

(DiFelice et al., 2021) proposes the structure of a

NoSQL database about customer reviews and a set of

ten useful query patterns. To implement an effective

customer service it is highly recommendable that the

underlying database is able to host unstructured data.

source: https://www.statista.com/topics/1961/ikea/

3.2.1 About the Loyalty Program

The loyalty scheme works as follows. The customers

of the DN are rewarded with points or cash back, ac-

cording to their preferences, as a percentage of their

purchases. The number of transactions per month

might also be taken into account. As a general rule,

the loyalty program to be implemented must be sim-

ple, relevant and evolve over time.

• Simplicity. It is essential that SMEs’ users easily

understand how the loyalty rewards are earned and

redeemed, otherwise the program might fail.

• Relevance. If the rewards being offered are not

genuinely appealing to customers, again the pro-

gram might fail.

• Evolution. The program must evolve over time

to keep up with evolving user needs and trends.

3.3 Discussion

Major Obstacles to the Success of Our Approach.

Resistance to the innovation is the ﬁrst obstacle. Most

of the SMEs that have been in business for years

have consolidated business processes which guaran-

tee them the economic sustainability. This category

of companies are often reluctant to the digital trans-

formation, since the introduction of IT in the ﬁrm

leads to big changes to the existing business pro-

cesses. Getting SMEs to understand the beneﬁts of

allying with competing ﬁrms is a fundamental pre-

liminary step. Achieving this goal is facilitated by

the level of the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs.

Many studies have proved that the higher the level of

e-commerce adoption by a SME the easier is to con-

vince them to enhance their technology infrastructure

and adapt their internal processes. Promoting initia-

tives to encourage the level of e-commerce adoption

by SMEs might be very helpful. The perception by

SMEs that resource sharing is a threat to them is the

second obstacle to the success of our approach. Es-

tablishing alliances between SMEs through a DN pre-

supposes horizontal and vertical cooperation. In this

perspective, SMEs could consider that the sharing of

resources represents a threat to their business, affect-

ing their position in the reference market and, conse-

quently, their economic performance. Such a conclu-

sion by an SME would exclude a priori the adoption

of the proposed approach.

Potential Risks for the SMEs. The ﬁrst risk con-

cerns the sharing of their physical customers. For an

SME, pooling its physical customers with other SMEs

An IT Infrastructure for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises Willing to Compete in the Global Market

773

on the digital channel could have the effect of favor-

ing the conditions under which the latter can choose

another supplier. The reward policy of Section 3.1.1

has been thought to overcome the distrust of SMEs to

share their physical customers with the other SMEs

of the DN. However, SMEs must resign themselves

to the idea that this risk is inevitable, in light of the

unstoppable diffusion of the digital technology in ev-

ery area (business, social and economic). The second

risk has connection with the economic investment.

This risk materializes just in case an SME adheres to

a DN but at a later stage it evaluates that choice as

not advantageous, thus deciding to abandon the DN

and sever the alliances in place: in such cases the in-

vestment made turn into an economic loss. Smaller

is the license cost of the generator of DNs bigger is

the probability that SMEs are encouraged to try such

a digital transformation.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The assumption underlying the present paper is that

the SMEs today willing to compete in the global mar-

ket must perform within a collaborative network to

compensate their small dimension. To collaborate in

a coordinated fashion, they must align their business

processes and the IT infrastructure. The present po-

sition paper sketched the authors’ vision about a way

to implement a shared IT infrastructure aiming at fa-

cilitating the achievement of a coordinated coopera-

tion among SMEs. The pillar of the proposal is the

DN. Through it, SMEs can reach the following fur-

ther goals:

• establish a lasting cooperation with other SMEs

by virtue of the Reward policy;

• expand the audience of potential digital customers

for their products/services. In fact, for each SMEs

part of the DN, the number of digital consumers is

equal to the sum of the physical customers of all

SMEs adhering to the network;

• offer (via DgNet) a consistent interaction to the

(digital) customers at any PS;

• implement a robust Customer service, an indis-

pensable prerequisite for retaining the digital cus-

tomers as long as possible.

Methods for the assessment of the degree of the

achievement of the shared goals will be part of the

future research.

To the listed beneﬁts, must be added all those

mentioned in Section 2, they too induced by the de-

cision of the SMEs to perform with other “sisters”

within a horizontal alliance.

This study is part of an ongoing industrial re-

search project that aims at developing a generator of

DNs. Recently, the proponents of the project have

released a tool (xGenerator) (Paolone et al., 2020)

that performs the transformations across the levels of

the Model Driven Architecture up to the Java code of

business Web applications. Both projects implement

the emerging low-code paradigm. In the case of the

generator of DNs, by making recourse to the gener-

ator, interested SMEs are facilitated in the instantia-

tion by themselves of the DN that best ﬁts the needs

of their businesses.

Once the IT infrastructure will be set up, the

next steps will concern the deﬁnition of suitable in-

formation processes capable of favoring the sharing

of resources among the SMEs and the engagement

of all corporate stakeholders, including their cus-

tomers. The new processes must facilitate the inno-

vation of the technological, cultural, organizational,

creative and managerial nature for the SMEs perform-

ing within the DN, thus extending the entire ecosys-

tem that orbits around the DN and, hence contributing

to the promotion of the development of the territory

where those ﬁrms operate.

Many studies have pointed out that the use of IT

is transformative and leads to big changes to the ex-

isting business processes. This general rule holds

also in the case that a certain number of SMEs join

a DN. Business-IT alignment refers to a condition in

which the relationship between business and IT is op-

timized to maximize the business value of IT and to

increase efﬁciency and effectiveness of organizational

processes. Unfortunately, a long list of factors inﬂu-

ence the alignment, as pointed out, for example, in

(El-Mekawy et al., 2015; Wang and Rusu, 2018). In

light of the ﬁndings in these papers, two relevant best

practices to be adopted by the SMEs adhering to a

DN are mentioned below. First of all a careful def-

inition of responsibilities and roles between business

and IT personnel is necessary. Then, a lot of atten-

tion has to be paid on the communication between

business and IT managers in order to eliminate mis-

understandings. The latter is a primary factor hinder-

ing business-IT alignment, as it has been proven in

(Wang and Rusu, 2018). To tackle this barrier, in (El-

Mekawy et al., 2015) authors report that: “a sugges-

tion raised by several interviewees is to implement a

set of rules to make it appealing to conduct commu-

nication more formally.”

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