Digital transformation in Tuscany, in short: at the end of October 2026 the regional grants for business digitalisation are closed, two Tuscan Chambers of Commerce still have a voucher open, and the real work is what it always was: working out which process wastes the most time and fixing that first.
Updated October 2026.
Small and mid-sized companies in Tuscany have very concrete problems: the leather goods subcontractor that receives orders from the brand by email and PDF, the car workshop that writes bookings in a paper diary, the farm stay that copies bookings by hand from three portals. This guide starts there, then reviews the grants available in Tuscany, Italy, and what to ask a Florence software house before handing it a project.
Where digitalisation stalls in Tuscan SMEs
The Tuscan economy is made of long supply chains and small companies working for much larger clients. The bottleneck is almost always the flow of information between one company and another, or between the office and the people working outside it.
Fashion and leather goods: the subcontractor chain
A workshop producing for three luxury brands receives technical sheets, orders and changes in different formats. Someone copies them into an Excel sheet, someone else updates the progress status verbally. When the brand asks how far along a batch is, the answer requires a phone call to the production floor. Here digitalisation starts with a single order archive, with progress updated by the people doing the work and, where the client allows it, direct data exchange with the client's system. A customer portal or an API integration is worth more than a business system full of features nobody opens.
Engineering and car workshops
For a workshop, the typical problem is bookings and quotes. In the custom management system for the Velmotor 2000 workshop, a Honda dealership in Florence, bookings arrived by phone, email and paper diary, and service quotes were calculated by hand from price lists. The software we built lets customers book online and receive a quote calculated from model, year of registration and mileage, while team leaders see the workshop's workload on a single screen.
Craftsmanship and luxury
In high-end craftsmanship the value lies in the unique piece, and the software has to be able to track it. For the Florentine jewellery house Grimaldo we developed the Grimaldo Warranty Handler: every piece of jewellery has a unique identifier, the system knows whether it is in stock, with a reseller or sold, generates certificates of authenticity and gives resellers a portal to order and check availability.
Tourism and hospitality
For hotels and farm stays the problem is having bookings, payments and guest communication in one place. Often the answer isn't new software but integration between the tools you already use: channel manager, property management system and accounting. If your property has ten rooms, a good off-the-shelf product is almost always enough.
Digitalisation grants in Tuscany 2026: what's really available
Anyone searching for a Tuscany digitalisation grant for 2026 finds plenty of pages announcing new calls. On the official sources, as of 29 October 2026, the picture is more sober. These are Italian public funding measures, relevant if your company is based or invests in Italy.
The Region of Tuscany funded digitalisation through the Impresa digitale grant (innovation services, ERDF regional programme 2021-2027): projects from €10,000 to €150,000 for micro, small and medium enterprises and professionals in manufacturing, tourism and retail, with services chosen from a regional catalogue. All sections are closed: "Digitale e intelligente" (digital and intelligent) in December 2025, "Digitale e sicura" (digital and secure) in April 2026, "Digitale e sostenibile" (digital and sustainable) on 14 August 2026. The Region's list of open calls currently shows no new digitalisation grant for businesses.
On the Chamber of Commerce side, 2026 was the year of the Doppia Transizione (twin transition) voucher, run by the Punti Impresa Digitale (digital business hubs):
- the Florence Chamber of Commerce accepted applications from 9 to 31 July 2026, with a 50% contribution of up to €10,000 per company: the call is closed;
- the Toscana Nord Ovest Chamber accepted applications from 8 to 17 July 2026;
- Arezzo-Siena has a call open until 15 December 2026, with vouchers of up to €3,500 covering 50% of costs;
- Maremma e Tirreno has a call open until 10 November 2026, with a budget of €130,000.
For Pistoia-Prato, check the Chamber's website or the list of calls on the PID portal.
Then there are the national Italian measures, which also apply in Tuscany: the Nuova Sabatini scheme for financing capital goods and software, and the enhanced depreciation (iperammortamento) introduced by Italy's 2026 budget law. The full picture, with a table of measures and notes on what is eligible, is in our guide to 2026 digitalisation grants in Italy.
Software house in Florence: what to ask before signing
Being close by helps. An analysis done on the shop floor, watching how people work, is worth more than ten calls. But proximity alone isn't enough: if the supplier can't tell you who will maintain the software three years from now, being ten minutes away matters little. Before signing, ask:
- Who does the analysis, and whether they'll come to your company to see the process with the people who use it every day.
- How often you'll see working software. We work in two-week sprints, and at every sprint the client tests the new features in a staging environment before they reach production.
- Who owns the code. In Selli projects the source code belongs to the client: if one day you want to change supplier, you can.
- How your data is handled. Selli has an information security management system certified to ISO/IEC 27001: you'll find the certificate number, certification body and scope on the certifications page.
- What happens after release: support, updates, response times.
If you're looking for a partner for custom business software, ask these five questions of every supplier you consider and compare the answers in writing.
When you don't need a software house
If your processes are the same as many other companies' (invoicing, payroll, a small online shop) and there are few users, buy a standard product and spend the budget on training the people who will use it. Custom software makes sense when the process is yours, sets you apart from competitors, and market products force you to work worse. To work out where to start, the five-step path in our guide to business digitalisation is a good starting point, even if you then decide not to build anything.
Let's talk
We're in Florence, on Viale Belfiore. If you want to work out which process in your company to digitalise first, or whether a project could qualify for a call that's still open, let's set up a call or a meeting. In the first conversation we listen to how you work today and tell you frankly whether custom software makes sense or whether a standard product is all you need.