From Portugal to Germany, scaling AI innovation with DERA

Originally developed in Portugal, DERA is now being replicated in Germany through a close collaboration between Axians Portugal and Axians Germany. The objective is to combine AI expertise with industry knowledge to simplify complex, document-heavy processes and scale the solution internationally.

To understand how this collaboration came to life, we spoke with two key contributors: Catarina Antunes Santos,  AI Specialist and LoB Manager at Axians Portugal, who focuses on building adaptable AI solutions for document processing. 

Sandra Baier, Product Manager and Project Lead in Germany, leads the development of eNature and focuses on waste management and sustainability reporting. 

 

How did the collaboration begin, and what led to the replication of DERA in Germany? 

Sandra Baier: From our side, this was a clear need. Our platform,  eNature, helps companies manage and report waste data, and extracting information from invoices was a major administrative burden for our customers. 

At the same time, companies are increasingly required to provide sustainability data. Integrating DERA allowed us to automate this process and make reporting faster and more accessible. 

Catarina Antunes Santos: So, the collaboration started at the Axians &  Actemium Hannover Messe Learning Expedition in 2025, where we met the German team and discussed their challenges around processing large volumes of documents. We quickly saw that DERA could address this need. 

After testing the solution with their documents and confirming strong results, we set up a structured collaboration with regular working sessions to adapt the solution to their context. 

 

Who benefits most from this solution? 

Catarina Antunes Santos: More broadly, any organization that works with documents can benefit, which essentially means every sector. We’ve seen strong impact in cases involving large volumes of documentation, where instead of reviewing hundreds of pages manually, users can rely on extracted data and summaries to work more efficiently.

Sandra Baier: Indeed, the solution simplifies documentation and reporting, reducing administrative workload and allowing users to focus more on operational tasks. 

 

What makes DERA scalable and suitable for replication across markets?

Catarina Antunes Santos: DERA was designed to be flexible. It is not tied to a specific document type or language and works through prompting rather than predefined templates. 

This allows it to adapt easily to new use cases and markets. Even in this project, we are already working with German documents, and with further fine-tuning, we can improve performance even more. 

Sandra Baier:  From a user perspective, this flexibility is key. It allows us to integrate the solution into our existing platform and adapt it to our specific data and reporting needs without major changes.  

 

How did the Portuguese and German teams complement each other? 

Catarina Antunes Santos: The Portuguese team brought the technical expertise, especially in AI and LLM integration, and guided the implementation of the solution. 

Sandra Baier: And on our side, we contributed the business knowledge. We understand the waste management processes, the data requirements, and what our customers need.

Catarina Antunes Santos: This combination is essential, technology needs to be aligned with real business use cases to create meaningful impact. 

 

What moment best illustrates the innovative spirit behind this project? 

Sandra Baier: Developing the innovation case after Hannover Messe was a key step for us. It helped us clearly define our objectives and gave the project a strong direction.  

Catarina Antunes Santos: I would also highlight how we adapted along the way. We decided to focus first on invoice processing, which was the most critical use case, before expanding further. 

This ability to prioritize, adapt, and co-create the solution really reflects the innovative spirit of the project.