Vendor diligence is assembly work. Pull the financials, read the contract redlines, check the sourcing history, write a brief, route it for approval. The agent does the assembly and writes its reasoning to a Dock row. Procurement reads the brief and approves. The vendor profile stays in Coupa, Ironclad, and SAP Ariba. The judgment lives in Dock.
Architecture
Coupa, Ironclad, and SAP Ariba stay the system of record for the raw data: vendor master, executed contracts, sourcing events. Dock is the system of record for what the agent interprets from that data. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the platform record (coupa_vendor_id, ironclad_contract_id, ariba_supplier_id), the agent identity, the decision, the reviewer, and the timestamp. The agent re-fetches platform data via fresh API reads when it needs current state, so the brief never drifts from the source.
The Dock surface
One table, vendor_diligence_briefs, holds the agent's draft briefs.
| coupa_vendor_id | vendor_name | financial_signal | contract_risk | sourcing_history | agent | draft_recommendation | reviewer | status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPA-77104 | Meridian Cloud Services | D&B PAYDEX 82, revenue +14% YoY | Ironclad: 3 MSAs, no unresolved redlines | Ariba: 2 prior awards, on-time delivery 96% | agent:procurement-diligence | Approve, Tier 1 | govind@dock | approved |
| CPA-77118 | Apex Industrial | DSO 71 days, recent litigation flag | Ironclad: indemnity clause unresolved | Ariba: 1 prior award, late delivery 22% | agent:procurement-diligence | Hold, escalate to legal | priya@dock | sent_back |
| CPA-77129 | Harbor Analytics | PAYDEX 79, profitable, no flags | Ironclad: NDA only, no MSA | Ariba: new vendor, no history | agent:procurement-diligence | Approve, Tier 3 pilot | govind@dock | approved |
The Ironclad contract ID and Ariba supplier ID sit in adjacent columns, omitted for width.
The worked workflow
A sourcing lead requests diligence on a vendor in Coupa. The agent reads the Coupa profile, pulls the matched Ironclad contracts to summarize open redlines, queries Ariba for prior awards and delivery scores, and runs a D&B financial pull. It writes one row to vendor_diligence_briefs with the signals and a draft recommendation. Procurement opens the row, reads the agent's reasoning, and either approves or marks sent_back. On approval, Dock pushes a brief into the Coupa vendor record. On send-back, the agent re-fetches the missing artifact and revises the same row, preserving the prior draft. The agent audit trail shows every read, every draft, every reviewer click.
Why it matters
Procurement's job is judgment, not tab-switching. The agent eliminates the assembly and the reviewer sees one brief with evidence attached. Briefs ship in hours, not weeks.
Attribution survives the handoff. When accounting or legal later asks why a Tier 1 vendor was approved with an unresolved indemnity clause, the Dock row names the agent, the reviewer, the timestamp, and every source record it read. The ACFE Report to the Nations finds that anti-fraud controls are associated with lower fraud losses and faster detection, with unusual vendor relationships among the highest-loss behavioral indicators at a $300,000 median (ACFE). Attributed diligence rows are exactly the kind of control auditors look for.
The brief is also auditable against compliance frameworks. NIST SP 800-161 Rev. 1 calls for organizations to identify, assess, and mitigate supply chain risks through visibility into how acquired products and services are developed and delivered (NIST). A diligence row tied to a contract, a sourcing record, and a financial pull is that visibility, made queryable.
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FAQ
Q: Why not store the brief in Coupa directly? A: Coupa is the vendor master. Dock holds the agent's reasoning and the reviewer's decision. The working draft, citations, and revision history live in Dock.
Q: What if Ironclad shows unresolved redlines after approval? A: The agent re-fetches contracts on a scheduled cadence and writes a new row if material changes appear. The original row stays immutable.
Q: Can the agent finalize without a reviewer? A: Only if procurement explicitly enables auto-approve for a tier. Default is reviewer-in-the-loop, and the row records which mode was active.
Q: How is this different from an Ariba workflow? A: Ariba routes the sourcing event. Dock holds the agent's reasoning, the evidence, and the reviewer's verdict, with attribution that survives.
