From Manual Checks to Smart Contract Compliance with Agentic AI

How do you ensure that contract agreements are actually applied correctly in the operational procurement process? This question was central to the collaboration between NS and McCoy regarding AI-driven contract and invoice control.

Within NS, procurement contracts with suppliers are recorded in SAP Ariba Contract Management. These contracts are then used within the operational procurement process. This led to risks regarding contract compliance, erroneous payments, and missed savings. The standard controls within SAP mainly focus on price and quantity deviations, while many important agreements are actually hidden in contract texts, clauses, price lists, and attachments.

For this challenge, NS and McCoy developed a Contract Compliance Assistant.

This AI agent serves as an additional control layer on top of SAP Ariba and SAP S/4HANA. It analyzes contract documents, combines them with operational procurement and invoice data, and automatically verifies whether contract agreements are being correctly adhered to.

AI that understands contracts

The solution combines contract documents, operational purchasing data, and invoice information into one intelligent workflow. This enables the AI agent to understand not only the transactions but also the agreements recorded in contracts, price lists, and clauses.

The AI checks, among other things:

• or prices on invoices match contractual price lists;

• or products fall outside contract catalogs;

• or payment terms deviate from agreed arrangements;

• or contractually agreed discounts have been correctly applied.

Contract managers then receive a clear summary of deviations, risks, and points of attention based on the invoices per contract.

The Proof of Concept is deliberately set up generically, so the solution is applicable to a wide range of contracts and processes. For specific contract types, additional checks can easily be added.

Smarter contract review, without additional manual work

For contract managers, this means more control, less manual investigation, and quicker insight into deviations and potential optimizations within contract compliance. At the same time, the collaboration demonstrates how AI helps organizations to structure procurement and finance processes in a smarter, more scalable, and efficient manner.

The first version of the solution was implemented in n8n, allowing value to be demonstrated quickly without heavy integrations or major changes to existing SAP processes.

From audits to continuous compliance

This showcase demonstrates that AI is not about futuristic experiments, but about concrete support for daily processes. By intelligently combining AI with existing SAP data, a scalable way is created to reduce compliance risks, make processes more efficient, and strengthen financial control.

The most important lesson?AI does not only need to analyze contracts, but can also continuously support organizations in monitoring contract agreements. This creates a smarter, more efficient, and better manageable way of contract compliance.