| INDUSTRY | EXPERTISE | COUNTRY |
| Government and Local Authorities |
| Business Applications
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| Axians Portugal |
Managing vast volumes of critical documents is a key challenge for organizations overseeing large-scale public investment programs. In Portugal, the Recover Portugal Task Force plays a central role in delivering the country’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), coordinating hundreds of thousands of projects with significant economic and societal impact.
With documents such as invoices, contracts, and reports forming the backbone of monitoring and decision-making, the need for efficient, reliable document processing is essential. In this context, the organization partnered with Axians to implement DERA, an intelligent solution designed to streamline document analysis, enhance accuracy, and accelerate operations at scale.
João Miguel Pereira, Director of the Information Services and Digital Processes Unit at the Portugal Recovery and Resilience Mission Structure (Estrutura de Missão Recuperar Portugal), discusses the organization’s digital transformation journey and the role DERA plays in enhancing document processing, supporting decision-making, and enabling greater efficiency at scale.
What is your organization’s activity, and how are documents such as invoices, contracts, and reports used in your daily operations?
The “Recover Portugal” Task Force is responsible for overseeing the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) in Portugal, promoting the implementation of numerous investments and reforms through RRP beneficiaries, which will have an impact on the Portuguese economy and society, accelerating the transition to climate resilience and the digital transition, and contributing to a more resilient economy.
The role of monitoring and tracking the implementation of investments and reforms, as well as tracking milestones and targets, is carried out based on evidence contained in thousands of expenditure documents such as invoices and other investment expenses, contracts, and reports. Given the scale of the entire PRR, the document control operation is highly demanding and intensive.
Before implementing the Document Extraction Retrieval Assistant (DERA) with Axians, what challenges were you facing when managing, searching, or analyzing large volumes of documents?
The EMRP tracks and monitors approximately 300,000 projects by final beneficiaries that contribute to the implementation of the PRR’s investments and reforms. Furthermore, its activities are carried out over a specific period, from 2021 to 2026, meaning that all tasks arising from its operations must be completed within this timeframe.
A major challenge we face is accelerating the process of analyzing all documentary evidence related to each project, including application reviews, payment requests, and milestones and targets, ensuring that these are carried out in a timely, rigorous, swift, and reliable manner to support the correct decision for each investment and project, which represents an enormous responsibility.
The use of this tool is now a very important support mechanism, as the PRR approaches its final stretch.
How does DERA support your teams in extracting or verifying key information from documents, and what impact have you seen in terms of time savings, efficiency, or reduced repetitive work?
DERA assisted the EMRP teams in the merit review of thousands of applications, reducing the time required by approximately 80% compared to initial estimates, as well as in the upload of invoices, ensuring rapid upload of invoices for projects, and the validation of their financial and tax data, thereby optimizing reliability for all PRR intermediate beneficiaries who use the Recuperar Portugal information system for final project management.
We thus ensure a significant increase in efficiency in project progress, which translates into increased financial execution of the PRR and payments to Final Beneficiaries.
How was the collaboration with Axians during the implementation of DERA?
The collaboration with Axians has been successful because the company combines its high technological capabilities with a deep understanding of the European fund management business and the EMRP’s mission, ensuring that DERA is highly relevant and useful to the EMRP’s mission and significantly improving and accelerating the work of the organization’s technical teams. We are therefore currently analyzing, designing, and developing the architecture to apply this tool to other support needs for the entire EMRP team.
As Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan enters its final phase, DERA has become a key enabler of faster, more accurate document processing at scale. Through its collaboration with Axians, Recuperar Portugal has significantly improved operational efficiency, reduced analysis times, and strengthened its ability to deliver timely, informed decisions across hundreds of thousands of projects.
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