Contract
The commercial terms that govern a relationship: scope, price, duration, service levels and the escalation and exit conditions attached.
01 Why it matters
What depends on getting this right
It is the entity that decides whether revenue is recurring, whether a price rise is permitted and whether a penalty applies. It usually exists as a document rather than as data, which is why so few organisations can report against their own terms.
02 Where it lives
Every system holds a different version
None of these is wrong. Each was built for a purpose and records the part of the entity that purpose needed, which is exactly why resolution is required rather than optional.
| System | What it holds of this entity |
|---|---|
| CLM or contract repository | the signed document and its metadata |
| ERP | the billing schedule and the price actually invoiced |
| CRM | the commercial view, renewal dates and owner |
| Service management or CAFM | the SLA being delivered against |
| Procurement | the buy-side equivalent, with its own terms and leverage |
03 Match keys
What actually matches, and what only looks like it does
| Key | How well it works |
|---|---|
| Contract number plus counterparty | Reliable where a repository exists. |
| Resolved customer or supplier | Required to see all agreements with one group. |
| Effective and expiry dates | Define which version governs a given transaction. |
| Parent and amendment linkage | An amendment is not a new contract, and treating it as one double-counts value. |
04 Survivorship
When two records disagree, which value wins
Survivorship is a business decision, not a technical default. These rules should be agreed with the people who own the data and then applied consistently, because changing them later restates history.
The executed document is authoritative
Not the CRM summary, and not what anyone remembers agreeing.
Amendments layer, never overwrite
The governing terms at a point in time are the base plus the amendments effective then.
Extracted clauses carry provenance
A term lifted from a document must record where in the document it came from.
Renewal and notice dates are calculated, not typed
Derived from the executed terms so that a missed notice period is impossible to overlook.
05 The cost of not doing it
What stays broken while it is unresolved
Price rises never applied
Indexation clauses exist and are not exercised because nobody reports which contracts permit one.
Auto-renewals nobody chose
Notice periods pass unnoticed, locking in a term the business would not have agreed.
SLA credits calculated by the counterparty
The performance data is yours; if you cannot produce the calculation, you accept theirs.
Scope creep delivered free
Work outside the agreed scope is performed and never billed because the scope is a PDF.
06 Metrics that divide by it
The numbers this entity carries
07 Questions
Frequently asked
Is contract data really an entity problem?
Yes, twice over. The contract itself needs identity and version history, and it is only meaningful once joined to a resolved customer or supplier — otherwise you cannot see all the terms governing one relationship.
What is the highest-value clause to extract first?
Price escalation and notice periods. Both are mechanical, both have a direct cash consequence, and both are routinely missed because they live in documents rather than in systems.
See the duplicates in your own data
We will resolve one entity on your systems, live, and show what the duplicates are costing.