Contract analysis: digitise your framework contracts and rate schedules so they can finally be checked

The problem

A contract a machine cannot read is a contract nobody checks

The framework contract is the document that governs: it says which price is due, which discount applies and on which date the revision takes effect. Yet it lives outside the information system. The ERP knows the purchase order and the invoice; the contract is a PDF in a shared folder, sometimes a scan, sometimes a spreadsheet sent over by the supplier. Without a structured reading, no systematic control is possible.

Formats make it worse. A single portfolio mixes contracts drafted by your legal team, supplier terms and conditions, rate schedules attached as annexes running to several hundred lines, and amendments that change three references out of a thousand. Each document has its own structure, units and wording. Comparing them with one another, or with an invoice, means retyping everything.

The result is control by sampling, by hand, on the most visible invoices. Gaps on small lines, badly computed revisions and forgotten special conditions slip through month after month. And when a gap is finally spotted, someone has to find the clause in the document to prove it, which usually takes longer than the gap is worth, so it is let go.

How it works

From scanned page to checkable reference

The Capture agent receives the document by upload, dedicated mailbox, SFTP or export, and reads it whatever its format: native PDF, scan, photo, spreadsheet. It recognises the structure of the contract, separates the body from the annexes, finds the price tables even when they span several pages, and extracts every line. Each extracted value stays linked to the exact place in the document where it was read, with a confidence score.

The values are then normalised and attached: to the supplier, to the purchasing category, to the validity period, to the amendment that changes them. A unit written as “linear metre” and one written as “lm” become the same thing; a reference spelled two ways is recognised as one. This is the work that makes the contract comparable with an order or an invoice.

Whatever could not be read with certainty is not guessed: it is flagged, with the page concerned, for a person to decide. The final reference is visible, sourced and exportable. It is ready to be used by the Compliance agent to check every quote, order and invoice against the signed text, but that check is described on its own page.

What changes

What changes once your contracts are readable

Exhaustive control becomes possible. As long as the contract is a PDF, you check by sampling; once it is a structured reference, every invoice can be checked against it, at the line level. That is what moves you from a few invoices reread each month to 5% to 100% of your purchases checked, depending on the scope you choose, without adding headcount.

Teams stop retyping. The time spent looking for the right version of the schedule, finding the revision clause or copying a price table into a spreadsheet goes back to negotiation: 15% to 45% of time returned to teams, per FTE, depending on scope and data maturity.

The portfolio becomes queryable. Which contracts are coming up for renewal? Which ones contain an indexation clause on a given index? What price did we negotiate for this reference with three different suppliers, and when? These questions get an answer in minutes, with the source of every figure, instead of a week of searching through folders.