Artificial Intelligence at Mercan: Innovating with Balance

Article by Marco Correia, Chief Information Officer

Artificial Intelligence is becoming an increasingly relevant ally in the way companies innovate, automate processes, and create value. At Mercan, its adoption has been steadily growing in a balanced manner, allowing us to test the potential of these tools without compromising the security, confidentiality, and quality of the work we carry out across the various sectors in which we operate.

One of the most notable examples is the use of ChatGPT for Teams, the enterprise version of the well-known language model. This solution provides a secure environment where employees can research, write, structure ideas, and create content efficiently. Unlike the free versions, ChatGPT for Teams ensures that the data we input is not used to train the model, thereby safeguarding the confidentiality of our operations. In addition, it offers more generous daily limits, enhanced authentication, and a centralized administration panel that simplifies access management and internal policies. Another key advantage is the ability to create "custom GPTs" tailored to specific tasks, which can be shared among teams — for example, to support marketing campaigns or source code development. Advanced features such as file analysis, automatic generation of graphs and summaries, and integration with external tools like Office 365 and SharePoint make this subscription a strategic resource for enhancing productivity and collaboration.

In parallel, Mercan has been conducting trials with Microsoft Co-Pilot, an intelligent assistant integrated into Office applications. Results from pilot programs with a limited group of users revealed strong potential to automate routine tasks and accelerate document creation. However, the high cost of licenses led us to postpone broader adoption, maintaining a cautious approach as we assess the return on this investment.

The IT team has also been working on internal solutions aimed at delivering more immediate benefits to our day-to-day operations. After two attempts that did not achieve the desired level of maturity, a conversational bot for the IT department help desk is set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025. This tool aims to respond quickly and consistently to the most frequent requests, freeing up the technical teams for higher-value tasks and enhancing the support experience provided to colleagues.

In the area of management systems, the ERP project with SAP, currently in its initial phase, incorporates advanced AI functionalities that will transform how we work with data and processes. The Grow with SAP and SAP Ariba solutions represent a significant qualitative leap. SAP Grow, focused on cloud ERP adoption, includes an intelligence layer — known as Joule — that delivers real-time financial insights, suggests actions based on data, and simplifies access to information through smart filters and automated summaries. These capabilities accelerate critical decision-making, optimize operations, and reduce administrative tasks. SAP Ariba, focused on procurement and spend management, leverages AI to identify spending patterns, suggest alternative suppliers, classify purchasing categories, and even automatically convert invoices into structured formats — reducing errors and speeding up processing times. The combination of these tools will enable Mercan to gain greater control over costs, strengthen compliance with internal policies, and better manage supplier relationships, including those linked to our real estate and hospitality projects.

Despite this promising outlook, it is important to acknowledge that many of the brands we work with maintain a conservative stance regarding the use of AI. The availability of tools based on this technology to franchisees remains limited, driven by concerns related to reputation, regulatory compliance, and experience consistency. This further highlights the importance of Mercan developing proprietary solutions tailored to our needs, while maintaining open dialogue with partners by demonstrating concrete use cases that prove the value and safety of these approaches.

Looking to the future, new trends are emerging, such as AI agents — systems capable of autonomously performing tasks across different platforms — and protocols like the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which ensure that models can be integrated with corporate data while adhering to security and privacy policies. These advances could allow, for example, the creation of continuous support services for agents or solutions that analyze hotel asset performance in real-time, all with an added layer of contextual intelligence.

Mercan’s strategy is therefore to adopt AI pragmatically: evaluate the return, manage risks, and ensure that each new implementation aligns with our culture and the expectations of our partners. The path we are taking shows that innovation can coexist with responsibility, allowing us to offer more agile services, personalize client experiences, and optimize internal operations — always with the confidence that each step is taken with security and long-term vision.