Consulting and AI engineering
- Home
- Artificial intelligence and data
- Consulting and AI engineering
The question we get asked most is not “what is AI”. It’s “where do I start, and how do I avoid wasting money”.
The problem, as we see it
In the companies we work with, artificial intelligence has arrived in one of two ways, and both are troublesome. Either as a pilot that worked in a demo and never reached production, or as a scatter of individual subscriptions that nobody governs and nobody can tell whether they are producing any value.
The missing piece is almost always the same: someone who knows the systems you already run — the ERP, the phone system, the warehouse, the files people actually work on — and knows where AI can be grafted on without rebuilding everything.
We did that work on ourselves first, on a legacy business platform of the kind that runs in thousands of Italian companies. Not on an infrastructure designed for AI: on the one that was there.
Six ways to engage
| What it is | How long | Who it’s for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Readiness assessment | A picture of processes, data and systems, and a list of use cases ranked by value against effort | 3-4 weeks | Anyone deciding whether and where to start |
| 2. Use case workshop | A week with your managers, turning ideas into implementable specifications with estimates | 1 week | Those who have the ideas but not the scope |
| 3. Custom implementation | We build it and take it to production, integrating with existing systems | 3-6 months | Those who have chosen the use case |
| 4. AI Act compliance support | System inventory, risk classification under Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, documentation, Article 4 training | 4-8 weeks | Anyone using or reselling systems that fall under Annex III |
| 5. Fractional AI engineer | One of our people on your project, on agreed days, continuously | 6-12 months, renewable | Those who need ongoing expertise without hiring |
| 6. Transizione 5.0 bundle | An AI project designed to meet the requirements of the Italian incentive scheme, with the technical documentation it needs | 2-4 months | Those who want the investment to qualify for the incentive |
Why us
We have a real track record, not a collection of prototypes. A document answering system over 1,025 indexed chunks, 6,873 automatically enriched dossiers, a programming interface exposing enrichment as a service, eight AI contexts configured and routed across three different vendors. These are numbers from our own systems, not from somebody else’s case study.
We know the stack Italian companies actually run. Long-lived ERPs, relational databases, payroll integrations. It is the hardest ground on which to graft AI, and it is the ground we have worked on.
We are vertical in one domain. Access, identification, traceability, attendance, environmental monitoring. If your use case sits in one of those areas, we do not start from zero.
Compliance is inside the work, not an annex at the end. We run our own datacentre in Italy, and we have already classified our own systems under the AI Act.
We have done applied research for fourteen years, inside European consortia, with academic partners. The techniques we use for document segmentation come from 2024-2025 literature, not from handbooks.
How we work
Three things we say before signing, because they head off nearly every problem we have seen:
We start from the data, not the model. If the data is missing or dirty, the first project is to put it in order — and we say so up front, even when it is not what anyone wants to hear.
The first release goes to production within three months. A pilot that stays a pilot is a cost. We would rather have a small use case that enters daily work than a large one that stays in a slide deck.
Every AI suggestion must be explainable. If the system proposes something, whoever uses it has to be able to see where it came from. That is why we almost always build on documents and citable sources rather than on closed models.
Questions we get asked
How much does it cost?
It depends on the engagement and the scope. The readiness assessment has a fixed price because it has a fixed duration; implementations are quoted after the workshop. We do not quote against generic briefs, because the number would not be reliable.
Do we need to run your software already?
No. AI consulting is a standalone service. If our systems are there too the work is faster, but it is not a requirement.
Which models do you work with?
Those of the main vendors — Anthropic, Google, OpenAI — on an architecture that lets us switch. Where the use case requires it, we also work with open models installed on the client’s infrastructure or on ours.
Does our data leave the company?
Only if you decide it should, and in that case we write it into the contract along with the list of vendors involved. Where data cannot leave, we work with locally installed models: it costs more and performs a little less, but it can be done.
Does it qualify for Transizione 5.0 or other incentives?
Often yes, and option 6 exists for exactly that. We check eligibility before starting, not afterwards.
Do you provide training?
Yes, and it is inside the AI Act compliance support package, because Article 4 makes it an obligation for anyone using these systems. We ran it across our whole company in 2026, so we have already tested the programme.
⚠️ A note of honesty. This service line is new: we built it on capabilities we have been using internally for two years, and the first projects with external clients start in 2026. If you are looking for a supplier with twenty AI references in their pocket, that is not us. If you are looking for someone who has already taken AI into production on their own systems and knows what that involves, let’s talk.