Accelerating the Transformation of Spanish SMEs with Kit Consulting

As part of Spain’s Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan (PRTR, its acronym in Spanish), funded by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU program, Kit Consulting was launched as a new strategic initiative by Red.es, an institution under the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service. The program is designed to support Spanish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in achieving advanced levels of digitalization.

Kit Digital focused on providing SMEs with essential tools to lay the foundation for digital transformation. Building on that progress, Kit Consulting was launched as a complementary program that offers specialized and personalized digital advisory services. The goal is to enable SMEs to advance in their digital transformation by offering a clear, actionable roadmap to guide their ongoing business evolution. Because the two programs are designed to complement each other, 82% of Kit Consulting participants had also previously benefited from Kit Digital.

Developed under the framework of the España Digital 2026 Agenda and the 2021–2026 SME Digitalization Plan, the program reaffirms Spain’s institutional commitment to boosting the productivity of its business ecosystem—not just by providing access to new technologies, but also by strengthening the internal capabilities required for their effective adoption.

Business Needs

Kit Consulting represented a major advancement in Spain’s public digitalization initiatives by integrating AI technologies to respond to a significant challenge: processing and evaluating a high volume of complex justification reports efficiently and accurately. The new model demanded a sophisticated operational structure capable of:

• Managing up to €300 million in grants effectively.
• Ensuring rigorous validation of reports with varying content and documentation formats.
• Integrating advanced control mechanisms without compromising speed or user experience.

The primary challenge was upgrading the Kit Digital infrastructure into a more advanced system—one capable not only of handling applications but also of validating the technical and financial justification of funded services with full traceability, speed, and quality assurance.

Solution

In collaboration with Red.es—the agency responsible for the program—NTT DATA supported the implementation of a purpose-built advanced technology platform to manage the entire lifecycle of Kit Consulting, with a particular emphasis on the critical validation phase. This solution integrates artificial intelligence, automation, cloud infrastructure, and advanced analytics. It also includes a video analysis system developed by Guadaltel to enhance the traceability and process validation.

Key components include:

• Supervised AI in the validation process: An AI engine assists human reviewers with document analysis.
• Syntphony platform: A smart solution based on robotics and process automation.
• Big Data & Data Lake: Enables advanced tracking and analysis of grant files.
• RPA and document validation: Automates repetitive tasks and document validation processes.

This approach enabled the system to process large volumes of technical documentation efficiently, ensuring regulatory compliance while keeping the operational flow.

How Does the System Work?

1. The beneficiary uploads the documentation with a report of the advisory services provided.
2. The system first applies intelligent processing to extract relevant information from various sources such as data, summaries, and terminology. This step uses technologies like semantic search models, OCR, and speech-to-text transcription.
3. The system performs intelligent validations based on pre-defined criteria: keyword detection, semantic consistency, depth of analysis, structural accuracy, plagiarism detection, and coherence across documents.
4. Human reviewers are supported through summaries, alerts, and partial validations.

AI-Based Review Types:

• Technical report: Detects key terms, evaluates semantic content, ensures relevance to the SME’s profile, and verifies that the advisory services provided are impartial and objective.
• Plagiarism detection: Verifies originality across documents submitted by the same or different Digitalization Agents (ADAs).
• Video analysis: Extracts transcripts, checks for required content, and validates alignment with the written report.
• Final report validation: Ensures complete and consistent documentation.

This system does not automate final decisions. Instead, it enables large-scale, objective, and consistent evaluations through a human-in-the-loop model—reinforcing both transparency and legal certainty.

Outcomes

The Kit Consulting project developed by NTT DATA has achieved the following outcomes:

• More than 17,900 grants processed
• A network of over 3,000 digitalization agents, including 1,600 with signed agreements
• Over €249 million in grants awarded (from a total fund of €300M)
• Over 12,600 technical reports automatically reviewed by AI
• 80% reduction in documentation review time
• More than 450,000 requirements automatically validated
• A replicable, sustainable platform for future projects and initiatives

Kit Consulting not only accelerates the digitalization of SMEs but also drives a structural transformation in the way public funding is managed.

• Quality: Validation mechanisms that would not be possible to implement effectively without AI
• Reliability: Mass validation of requirements with full traceability and secure end-to-end architecture
• Scalability: The ability to grow without compromising operational quality
• Efficiency: Intelligent automation has significantly reduced time and resource consumption

"Kit Digital & Kit Consulting" received the President Award (highest honor) in the Business Transformation & Scale category at the #NTTDATAAwards2025.