City of Madrid: Building a citizen-first digital capital with unified operations supported by SAP solutions
Simplifying city services for every citizen
The City of Madrid operates at the scale of a small nation, managing finance, HR, and tax services for millions of citizens. To reduce fragmentation and improve service delivery, it unified operations with SAP solutions, creating trusted data, streamlined processes, and simpler, more accessible experiences for citizens and employees.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Government | Madrid, Spain | 30,000 employees |
tax-collection efficiency, improving revenue reliability.
workdays saved annually through process improvements.
steps for citizens to access information, down from 14.
Managing Director, IT Department, City of Madrid
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Government | Madrid, Spain | 30,000 employees |
tax-collection efficiency, improving revenue reliability.
workdays saved annually through process improvements.
steps for citizens to access information, down from 14.
Managing Director, IT Department, City of Madrid
Simplifying complex public services while reducing internal complexity
For the City of Madrid, digital transformation starts with a simple question: How do you make services accessible for everyone, including “Mrs. María,” a citizen who may not be digitally savvy but relies on public services to be clear and intuitive to use?
Delivering that experience was becoming harder. Operating at the scale of a small country, the City of Madrid’s finance, HR, and tax systems had evolved independently, creating silos, inconsistent data, and disconnected processes. Employees navigated multiple tools and manual workflows, increasing administrative effort and slowing response times.
Legacy systems added further complexity, requiring ongoing maintenance while limiting innovation. Data inconsistencies reduced trust in reporting and made decision-making harder.
The challenge extended beyond IT. The city needed to simplify operations, improve data quality, and connect processes to allow employees to work more efficiently and citizens to interact with services more easily and confidently.
Managing Director, IT Department, City of Madrid
Unifying operations to simplify work for employees and citizens
To simplify operations at scale, the City of Madrid established its digital operations on SAP solutions, selecting them for their ability to help it integrate complex processes, strengthen data consistency, and reliably support mission-critical public services.
The city implemented an SAP Cloud ERP Private solution to modernize finance and HR processes and adopted the SAP Tax and Revenue Management for Public Sector package to transform how it manages municipal taxes. Using SAP Business AI Platform enables integration across systems and supports continuous innovation.
This unified foundation allowed the city to reshape how it operates. Financial processes such as budgeting, accounting, and internal control are now digital and traceable, improving transparency and strengthening oversight. Likewise, the introduction of digital employee records and unified services simplifies HR processes, reducing administrative workload and enabling more efficient workforce management. In tax and revenue management, a single, consistent view of each taxpayer enables faster, more accurate handling of taxes, fees, and fines, improving both operational efficiency and citizen interactions.
The city is also advancing innovation by applying embedded AI capabilities from SAP within its “Interventor Hub” to support internal control and automate financial analysis. Tasks that previously required manual effort can now be executed faster and with greater consistency, improving both efficiency and reliability.
A significant part of the transformation focused on data. Millions of fragmented records were validated and consolidated into a trusted, shared data foundation across departments. With integrated systems and reliable data, employees no longer switch between disconnected tools but instead operate within a single environment, reducing complexity and enabling more consistent execution of processes.
Managing Director, IT Department, City of Madrid
Improving efficiency, empowering employees, and simplifying citizen interactions
By unifying systems and data, the City of Madrid transformed both its internal operations and the way it delivers services to citizens.
A strong foundation of trusted data enables more consistent processes and more reliable decision-making. This improvement directly contributed to achieving 98% tax-collection efficiency, an all-time high that strengthens revenue predictability and supports more effective public planning.
Operational efficiency also improved significantly. Streamlined workflows now save more than 10,000 workdays each year and free the equivalent of 43 full-time employees. This shift allows teams to move away from manual, repetitive tasks and focus instead on higher-value activities such as analysis, coordination, and delivering better services.
With better visibility and integrated processes, employees can act faster and with greater confidence. That’s because decisions are now based on consistent, real-time information rather than fragmented and conflicting data sources.
These changes are visible across day-to-day operations. Finance teams benefit from greater transparency and control, HR teams spend less time on administrative tasks, and tax teams can respond to citizen inquiries with greater speed and accuracy.
Most important, the transformation simplifies the experience for citizens. For people like Mrs. María, interacting with city services now involves fewer steps, clearer information, and faster outcomes, reducing the effort required to access essential services.
The result is a shift from fragmented systems to a connected, data-driven city that operates more efficiently while delivering more reliable and accessible public services.
Managing Director, IT Department, City of Madrid
Expanding AI capabilities to further simplify services and operations
The City of Madrid is looking to build on its digital foundation by expanding its use of data and artificial intelligence across its SAP landscape.
A key focus is strengthening data management capabilities, including plans to adopt the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to further unify and govern information across departments. At the same time, the city is scaling AI-supported scenarios to deepen automation, enhance analytical capabilities, and accelerate decision-making across core processes.
By continuing to evolve its digital backbone and innovation layers, the city aims to further reduce operational complexity while improving the accessibility and quality of public services.
The objective remains consistent: to ensure that technology operates in the background, enabling employees to focus on delivering value and allowing citizens to interact with public services intuitively and effectively.
Want to know more about the City of Madrid?
Powering Municipal Services to Build a Citizen-First Digital Capital (SAP Innovation Awards 2026)