Two hundred contracts,
one register, one question
The register of information under Article 28(3) lists the arrangements. Article 30 lists what each of those arrangements must contain. Proving that the second is true of the first is a document problem, and it does not get smaller.
"Show me where your contract with this provider grants the audit rights required under Article 30."
The clause is rarely called 'audit rights'. It sits in a service schedule, is modified by an amendment, and is qualified by a group-level framework agreement that the local contract incorporates by reference.
Why ordinary search does not get there
The contract is not one document.
Framework agreement, service schedule, amendments, DPA and security annex. The obligation you need to prove is usually formed by two or three of them together.
The register says which contracts exist, not what is inside them.
A complete register and a compliant contract population are two different achievements, and the second one is where the finding comes from.
Absence has to be provable too.
'We could not find a clause' and 'there is no clause' are different statements. Only the second one is a usable gap report.
A worked example
Does the arrangement with this provider grant the audit and access rights required for a critical function?
- 01Framework agreement, clause 14
Grants general audit rights, but excludes subcontractors.
- 02Amendment 2, clause 3
Extends the scope to subcontractors, with 30 days' notice.
- 03Service schedule B
Marks the service as supporting a critical or important function.
- 04Security annex, section 7
Restricts on-site access to two occasions per calendar year.
Audit rights exist and cover subcontractors after amendment 2, but the annual on-site restriction and the notice period are open points for a critical function — each with its clause named.
What ARGUS does here
Requirement-to-clause mapping
Each contractual requirement is checked against the contract population, and the result is a clause reference rather than a similarity score.
Contradiction surfacing
Where an amendment narrows what the framework agreement granted, both are reported together instead of whichever the search ranked higher.
Explicit gaps
When no clause satisfies a requirement, the output says so and lists the documents that were searched, so the finding is defensible.
Register-ready output
Answers are structured per arrangement and per requirement, in a form that can be carried into the register maintenance process.
What it does not do
Stated here rather than discovered in week three of a pilot.
- ARGUS does not maintain your register of information and does not file anything with an authority.
- It reads what you index. Contracts held only in a counterparty's system are outside its view.
- A clause mapping is a preparation, not a legal opinion. Your counsel decides whether a clause is sufficient.
- We have built and demonstrated these scenarios; there are no production installations to reference.
Questions we get asked
Can it read scanned contracts?+
How does it handle contracts in several languages?+
Where does this sit relative to our GRC tool?+
Test it on a question you already lost time on
Bring one question your own documents should be able to answer, and the documents that ought to contain the answer. If the evidence is not there, that is the result — and it is worth knowing before an auditor finds it.