For a Portuguese SME considering AI, a useful first project may be connecting the systems that already run the business. Orders, stock, customer messages and service activity need consistent identifiers and clear ownership before an assistant can safely work across them. The immediate opportunity is a better operating process, with AI introduced where its contribution can be evaluated.
Portugal's government published its Digital National Strategy action plan for 2026–2027 on 29 December 2025 and presented the National Artificial Intelligence Agenda, ANIA, on 8 January 2026. The announcements include business digitization, SME adoption and digital skills. They are policy context, not proof that a particular company qualifies for funding or will achieve a return. Digital strategy action plan, ANIA announcement.
Turn national momentum into one operating decision
A management team does not need to digitize every process at once. Identify a workflow whose delays or repeated corrections are visible to the people doing the work.
Consider a hypothetical Portuguese distributor selling to domestic and international customers. Orders arrive through a website and email, stock is managed in an ERP, and service requests sit in a separate inbox. Employees spend time reconciling product references and asking colleagues for updates.
The first decision is whether to connect those records, improve the existing tools or build a small operational interface. Buying a general chatbot does not resolve the underlying uncertainty about which record is authoritative.
Map the order journey with the people who run it
Follow a real type of order from arrival through fulfilment and service. Identify the handoffs, approvals and manual checks. Record where a customer promise depends on information in another system.
For the distributor, the map might show that the website displays a stock figure that staff do not trust, so every unusual order receives a manual confirmation. An integration project needs to understand why the figures differ before making the confirmation automatic.
Bring sales, operations and finance into the discussion. Each group may use “completed order” differently. Agree the meaning before writing code; otherwise, the integration can move inconsistent assumptions faster.
Establish data ownership and language needs
Assign ownership for customer references, product codes, quantities, order status and service records. Define what happens when a record changes in the system that does not own it.
A Portuguese business serving export customers may also need information in Portuguese and other languages. Identify which descriptions are approved product content, which messages may be translated and which identifiers must remain unchanged. Language support should be tied to actual users and workflows.
Review date, currency and unit handling with the business owners. The software team should implement confirmed rules rather than infer accounting treatment from a country name. Keep financial requirements under the control of the responsible specialist.
Select a bounded integration release
Choose one flow and define the result your team should be able to verify. For example, an authorized employee could see an order, its current stock allocation and related service requests without copying references between three applications.
A first-release brief can contain:
- ▸The applications and account editions involved.
- ▸The records and fields that each system owns.
- ▸The event that starts synchronization.
- ▸The business tolerance for delayed information.
- ▸Rules for duplicates, missing references and conflicting values.
- ▸An exception queue with a named reviewer.
- ▸Reconciliation checks and a documented recovery process.
This scope allows a supplier to explain whether an existing connector, configuration change or custom integration is appropriate. It also makes proposals easier to compare.
Introduce AI where evidence can support a decision
Once the relevant records are available under appropriate permissions, consider a narrow AI capability. In the distributor example, it might draft a response to a delivery query using the authorized order status and approved product information.
Keep consequential actions separate. Drafting a message does not require authority to change a delivery commitment, issue a refund or alter inventory. Begin with the access needed to evaluate the task.
Prepare representative Portuguese-language cases and any additional languages used by customers. Include ambiguous product names, outdated information and questions without sufficient evidence. The acceptance criteria should reward correct escalation as well as useful answers.
Portugal's ANIA announcement discusses adoption alongside skills and responsible deployment. In a company project, that translates into a practical question: who will review the output and has that person been trained to recognize the system's limitations? This is an implementation choice, not a promise derived from the policy.
Measure the complete workflow
Define a baseline before the first release. You might measure the time to resolve an order-status question, the number of manual corrections or the proportion of requests requiring another department.
After launch, include review time and exception handling in the comparison. An assistant that writes quickly but forces staff to recheck every source may not improve the full process. A straightforward integration can sometimes deliver the more useful first result.
Track operating cost with the same care. Include hosting, external services, connector subscriptions, AI usage and maintenance. Agree who reviews usage and approves changes so a pilot does not become an unmanaged recurring expense.
Keep funding and engineering decisions distinct
A policy announcement can encourage investment without making every proposed project eligible for support. If your company is considering a funding program, check its current official call, conditions and deadlines with the responsible adviser.
Build the engineering brief around business needs and evidence that can be accepted. If a funding application requires additional documentation, identify that work explicitly. Do not let an assumed subsidy replace the decision about whether the workflow is worth improving.
The CRM and ERP integration scope guide can help structure the first phase. To discuss a Portuguese operations project, explore software engineering services and send the systems involved, the workflow and the recurring exceptions. That creates a concrete starting point for integration, a custom tool or a bounded AI pilot.