Frequently Asked Questions

The first look is free: we use public information from your website to show possible automation and AI applications for your company. During the audit, we work with your team and internal information to assess which projects make sense, how much they could cost and where to start.

Within 72 business hours of your request. All we need is your company’s website and a work email address.

We provide a fixed quote based on the departments and processes to be analysed. Scope and price are agreed before we start. Requesting the first look does not commit you to an audit.

The audit usually takes three to six weeks. Managers from the relevant areas take part in discussions and review information; we agree their time commitment when defining the scope. The first look only requires your website and a work email address.

For the first look, no: we use public information. For the audit, we agree which data, documents or system access are needed for the processes in scope. Any access is agreed with your team in advance.

A roadmap with prioritised opportunities and defined projects. For each project we specify what processes it includes, what integrations it needs, the estimated investment and the expected return. We also indicate what should be prepared or postponed.

We document that conclusion and explain why. In some cases, it is better to simplify the process, prepare the data or resolve other dependencies before automating it.

Some opportunities share a common technical foundation. Building it once and extending it to new processes reduces development and maintenance costs. It also allows teams to share information and reuse capabilities already developed for other areas.

No. The roadmap is yours: you can implement it with Akaen, another provider or your own team. If we develop any projects together, we agree their scope and budget separately.

At AKAEN, we are a technology consultancy specialising in business transformation through process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) and custom software development.

We avoid the rigidity and bureaucracy of traditional consultancies. Our strengths are agility and radical honesty: we implement technology where it removes bottlenecks and delivers a real return, rather than following trends.

Our pragmatic philosophy (Think Big, Start Small) uses business metrics from day one to prioritise projects that deliver value quickly.

Our technology approach spans sectors. Rather than focusing on one niche, we address a clear need: reducing inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

Sectors with heavy operational workloads: pharmaceuticals, chemicals, manufacturing and food, where optimising processes and connecting systems makes a real difference to profitability.

Growing companies: businesses that need to scale through automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence, handling more volume without sharply increasing staffing costs.

Demanding environments: our technical capabilities are proven in critical operations, including our work transforming back-office processes at leading financial institutions.

What matters most is how you work. If your team wastes time on mechanical tasks that add no value, we design the custom technology solution you need.

At AKAEN, we assess both operational impact and technical feasibility to decide whether a process is worth automating. Combining RPA (robotic process automation) with artificial intelligence has greatly expanded what we can optimise.

A process is a strong candidate if it shows several of these signs:

High time and resource consumption: repetitive, high-volume tasks create bottlenecks, take hours from your team and prevent analytical work (high opportunity cost).

Lack of integration (employees acting as a bridge): people copy, paste and cross-check data manually between ERP, CRM, Excel files or web portals that are not connected through APIs.

Information-intensive work: structured data is quickest to automate, but AI goes further by processing invoices, interpreting emails or extracting information from unstructured documents without human intervention.

Decision-making: AI moves beyond the classic RPA rule “if A happens, do B”, enabling more complex validation and contextual analysis.

We start with our process audit, analysing workflows and calculating the projected return on investment (ROI). If the use case delivers value quickly and frees real capacity, we design the right solution—traditional RPA or intelligent AI automation—to automate it.

At AKAEN, we use a simple analogy: RPA provides the “hands”, AI provides the “brain”, and hyperautomation is the complete “nervous system” of your operations.

As consultants, we see these technologies as a toolkit for solving business problems. Here is how they differ and work together:

RPA (robotic process automation) provides the executing “hands”. It handles repetitive, mechanical tasks based on fixed rules (“if A happens, do B”). It interacts with systems as a person would: clicking, copying and pasting data, or navigating ERP systems and websites. It is fast and highly efficient, but needs structured information.

Artificial intelligence (AI) provides the cognitive layer, the “brain”. It steps in where classic RPA falls short, processing unstructured data—scanned invoices, the context of a customer email or key information in legal contracts—and making complex or probabilistic decisions in milliseconds.

Hyperautomation is a strategic approach, rather than a software technology. It coordinates RPA + AI + API integrations + custom software development to automate processes end to end. It transforms a complete workflow rather than an isolated task.

The AKAEN approach:

We deliver practical hyperautomation, studying your case and building a custom hybrid solution. For example, AI reads and classifies hundreds of supplier emails, then RPA enters their data in your ERP without anyone touching a keyboard.

This is how we scale real businesses: combining the strengths of each technology to automate operations.

Following Think Big, Start Small, we recommend starting with Quick Wins: processes that can be automated in weeks and deliver an immediate ROI (return on investment).

Although we can design your company’s full digital transformation, the best starting point is a process with these characteristics:

High volume and substantial manual work: daily tasks that require copying and pasting between ERP, CRM and email because systems are not integrated through APIs.

Administrative bottlenecks: critical, repetitive tasks such as invoice data extraction, bank reconciliation, order management, employee onboarding or financial reporting.

Low initial complexity: the “happy path”, without unusual exceptions, accounts for 80% or 90% of the work.

Starting here demonstrates the value of automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence quickly, builds the team’s confidence as tedious tasks disappear, and funds later automation phases through the savings generated.

This is how we build scalable digital factories, step by step.

A major concern when starting digital transformation is having to replace systems that still work, even if they are old. At AKAEN, we design solutions that fit naturally into your existing environment without disruptive migrations.

Depending on your tools, we use three approaches:

RPA automation for legacy or closed systems. Software robots click and type through the interface as a person would, without changing internal code.

API integrations for modern systems that can connect natively in the background.

Custom development when a bridge solution or a small dedicated application is needed to connect gaps in your architecture.

Whether you use a modern cloud ERP or a 15-year-old accounting package, we put your business first and automate operations with the technology that best fits what you already have.

At AKAEN, we are technology-agnostic: we integrate with the ecosystem your company already uses, rather than limiting ourselves to a fixed catalogue of tools.

We work at three connection levels to keep information flowing without bottlenecks:

Corporate systems and databases: direct API or webhook integrations with major ERP systems (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Navision, Sage, Odoo), CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot) and relational databases (SQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle).

Office and cloud environments: complete workflows connected by automating reading and writing in Microsoft 365 (Excel, Outlook, SharePoint), Google Workspace, AWS or Azure.

Legacy or closed systems: for older software, AS400 terminals or third-party platforms without APIs, such as government websites or supplier portals, we use RPA (robotic process automation) to interact with the interface, reproducing a person’s clicks and typing.

We also integrate advanced artificial intelligence engines, such as OpenAI or Anthropic, to add capabilities like reading unstructured documents and making complex decisions.

Our method is fast, transparent and focused on business metrics. We start with a conversation to understand where your team loses time and resources.

We then carry out the process audit, analysing systems, identifying bottlenecks and presenting a clear business case with the expected ROI. Following Think Big, Start Small, we propose starting with Quick Wins, the processes that deliver value fastest.

Once approved, our technical team builds the custom solution: connecting APIs, deploying RPA for legacy systems or integrating artificial intelligence for document reading. We work in an agile way without interrupting daily operations.

Finally, we deploy, measure results and provide ongoing maintenance to keep automations robust and scalable. Your team regains time, your business takes centre stage and operations run automatically.

It depends on workflow complexity and the systems involved, but we avoid endless development. With Think Big, Start Small, projects are designed to show return on investment (ROI) in weeks rather than years.

Typical timelines are:

Quick Wins (3 to 6 weeks): straightforward RPA or API connections for stable, repetitive processes with structured data. In under a month and a half, the solution is in production and freeing hours.

Cognitive processes (1 to 3 months): workflows integrating artificial intelligence to read unstructured documents such as invoices or contracts, make decisions or connect several legacy systems.

End-to-end hyperautomation (phased rollout): full back-office transformations, such as our corporate banking project. We design the complete roadmap and deliver value incrementally every few weeks.

Everything starts with our process audit, providing a precise schedule and expected savings within a few weeks, before a line of code is written.

We build the technology, but you know the business. Delivering value quickly and accurately requires alignment and close cooperation with your internal team.

We work alongside your business expert, whose involvement is needed to map the process, understand bottlenecks and define the decisions for AI or RPA. We do not disappear for months and return with a closed software package.

Digital transformation is also a cultural change. We commit to explaining and training your team at every stage so they feel comfortable and in control.

This clear, continuous communication ensures the project fits your reality and makes operations truly automatic.

We measure success by the real problems solved. It is not all about hours or euros: we agree each transformation project’s objectives in advance.

Cost savings and freed time are fundamental, but we also value qualitative indicators and risk reduction. RPA or artificial intelligence succeeds when it eliminates errors in critical operations, shortens response times and helps you comfortably meet SLAs (service level agreements). Complete traceability is equally important: every process step is recorded digitally to support compliance and potential audits.

Ultimately, success means peace of mind and scalability: your team can handle more business without stress or multiplying the technical structure.

We treat access security with the rigour expected in finance or pharmaceuticals. Digital transformation must not create security gaps in your infrastructure, so all automation and development follows Secure by Design practices.

We never embed passwords or API tokens in source code. Encrypted credential managers (secure vaults) protect sensitive information and decrypt it only in memory at the moment of execution. We strictly apply the principle of least privilege: software robots access only the applications, screens and databases needed for their workflow.

We provide a complete audit trail. Every login, document read by artificial intelligence and data change is recorded in an immutable log. Your IT team retains full control over automated operations and compliance at all times.

Compliance and data privacy are central to our technical architecture. We apply Privacy by Design to automation, API integration and AI projects, ensuring compliance with the GDPR and each client’s sector regulations.

To protect personal, financial or medical information, we implement:

Processing in transit (without persistence): RPA processes and AI engines extract, process and enter data into the destination system without permanently storing it in unauthorised intermediate databases.

Anonymisation and encryption: when processing unstructured documents such as payslips or records, we mask or anonymise sensitive data (PII) so it cannot be read in system logs. All information at rest and in transit is encrypted using industry standards (TLS/AES-256).

Strict access control: only authorised, audited AKAEN technical staff, under confidentiality agreements (NDAs) and data processing agreements (DPAs), can access development or production environments, always under your IT team’s control and supervision.

We do not outsource critical data processing to third-party tools without explicit consent and prior validation of GDPR compliance. Your information remains yours; we build the secure route it travels through.

We design solutions knowing that technology environments constantly change. To prevent serious disruption, we work at two levels:

Robust design (exception handling): automations distinguish business errors, such as a missing tax ID on an invoice, from system errors, such as an ERP outage or a changed website layout. For the latter, the process stops safely, isolates the affected transaction, continues with the rest and sends a detailed alert.

Proactive maintenance and support: automation is an ongoing service. We offer monitoring and support to detect failures proactively. If an application changes its interface and affects a solution, our team receives the alert, adjusts the code and returns the process to production.

We act as your long-term technology partner, keeping your business running through updates to your systems.

Cost varies with process complexity, the number of applications and whether automation needs complex decisions or artificial intelligence to read unstructured documents.

The key question is how quickly it delivers results.

We seek a clear, measurable return on investment (ROI) in the short term, generally under a year. During the initial audit, we compare estimated development costs with direct operational savings: fewer manual hours, removal of duplicate tasks or scalability without new hires.

We proceed to development only if the business impact is positive and fast.

We aim for the project to pay for itself in the short term. With Think Big, Start Small, we prioritise Quick Wins whose return on investment materialises within 6 to 9 months of going live.

We measure ROI in direct savings—recovered hours and fewer mechanical errors—and in the qualitative impact on the business.

The return is visible when an overloaded department processes information in real time, 24/7, while meeting compliance requirements, or when a growing company absorbs 40% more operational volume without increasing its cost base through RPA and artificial intelligence.

Before development, we calculate the detailed business case to ensure profitability justifies the technology.

Yes. Going live is the start of real operations. We organise the post-deployment phase into two areas:

Proactive support and maintenance: we monitor daily runs. If ERP, CRM or third-party portals change versions, we quickly adjust connections or visual selectors to minimise service interruptions.

Evolution and scalability: following Think Big, Start Small, the first use case is usually the foundation. Once stable, we work with your business team to add rules, introduce artificial intelligence capabilities such as processing new document types, or extend hyperautomation to other departments.

We aim to be your ongoing technology partner, keeping custom software and automated processes aligned with new market requirements.

We specialise in solving inefficiencies rather than in one sector. We work with medium and large companies that need to scale without sharply increasing overheads.

Automation (RPA), artificial intelligence and custom development add value in document-heavy sectors with strict processes and complex regulations: corporate banking, pharmaceutical laboratories, chemicals and manufacturing. If your back-office is overloaded, we can help.

We operate from Barcelona and deliver projects globally. Our technical and consulting teams can audit processes, build solutions and provide 100% remote support to companies anywhere, fitting into their working routines as if we were in the next office.

The first step is a direct conversation. We use it to understand how your team works, which manual processes slow growth and whether Think Big, Start Small fits your business goals.

There are two ways to arrange it:

Email admin@akaen.com, briefly describing the operational problem or systems you need to integrate.

Or use our website’s contact form, providing your company details.

We will reply as soon as possible to find a time, assess your case and explore how we can help scale your operations.