Key takeaways
Contur, a Norwegian construction company specialising in concrete infrastructure, used to draft every procurement contract manually, with creation, signing and archiving spread across individual, manual steps and many employees holding authority to sign. Precisely gave Contur a way to standardise its own procurement templates while keeping guidance built into the contract flow, replacing informal, manual checks with a shared system. Since January 2024, Contur has created more than 300 procurement agreements in Precisely, across subcontractor, goods, hired labour and architect/consultant contracts, with faster search and archiving, automated signing reminders, and contract metadata that now feeds Power BI for financial and operational follow-up.
Background
Contur builds the kind of infrastructure most people only notice when it isn't there: bridges, energy and industrial facilities, and the concrete construction behind them. The company works the full value chain, from planning to delivery, with revenue of around NOK 1.9 billion. Contur is part of AKH group, a group of 6 companies.
Contract authority at Contur doesn't sit with a small legal team. Many employees across the organisation have the authority to enter into contracts with subcontractors and suppliers on the company's behalf. That spread of responsibility is what made the company's old, manual way of working increasingly hard to sustain.
Location: Norway
Industry: Construction & Civil Engineering
300+ procurement agreements standardised since 2024. Contur has used Precisely for every kind of procurement contract, from subcontractor agreements to hired labour, since January 2024.
Where it started: a process built entirely in Word
Before Precisely, every procurement contract at Contur started life as a Word document. Creating, signing and archiving an agreement meant working through several manual steps, with no shared system tying them together.
“We have many employees with the authority to enter into contracts,” Sigmund Jensen, Head of Procurement at Contur, explains.
With that many people drafting agreements, getting everyone to use the right template, worded correctly, wasn't something a shared drive could guarantee on its own. And once a contract was signed, finding it again, or checking what had actually been agreed with a given supplier, took real effort. There was no fast way to search across past agreements, and no automatic way to chase a signature that had stalled in someone's inbox.
Choosing a system built around Contur's own templates
Contur went looking for a platform flexible enough to be shaped around its own procurement templates and different agreement types, but structured enough to guide anyone drafting a contract, wherever they sat in the organisation.
“Precisely matched our need for a flexible solution that could be built around our own procurement templates and working processes,” Jensen says.
What mattered in particular was the ability to embed Contur's own rules and guidance directly into the contract flow, which was especially relevant given how many people across the organisation have the authority to create and enter into agreements, without a shared system to guide them.
A training model built for a distributed team
Precisely offers a structured training programme of its own, but Contur chose a different model: an internal superuser runs training in small groups. That approach made it possible to tailor the training to Contur's own workflows and each user's needs, while building internal expertise at the same time.
From manual steps to a process that holds together
Since January 2024, Precisely has carried more than 300 procurement agreements at Contur, mainly contracts with subcontractors, goods purchases, hired labour, and agreements with architects and consultants.
“We now have a more consistent contracting process, while still being able to adapt the templates to our needs,” Jensen says.
Search and archiving are faster than they were under the old manual process, and digital signing comes with automatic reminders, which means less time spent chasing a signature stuck somewhere in an inbox.
“Contracts are drafted faster, signing and follow-up reminders are automated, and the people who need to follow up on agreements find them more quickly,” he adds.
There's a quieter benefit too. Because past contracts are easy to search, teams can check what was agreed with a supplier before, rather than starting each new negotiation from nothing, the way manual archiving used to force them to.
Contract data that feeds into how Contur runs the business
The metadata captured in Precisely now flows into Power BI, giving Contur a way to check that costs incurred are backed by a signed contract, and that payments line up with what was actually agreed, a check that was harder to make when each contract was tracked manually, in a separate document.
“The most valuable gain is the combination of time savings, quality and governance,” Jensen says.
A collaboration that keeps developing
Jensen also points to the working relationship with Precisely's team. “We've found Precisely's support team responds quickly and well,” he says, adding that several features Contur asked for early on have since been built.
Looking back on the shift from a manual process to Precisely, Jensen sums it up:
“Precisely gives us the flexibility to adapt the contracting process to our existing procurement templates and project-specific requirements, while supporting the people out on our projects to develop contracts in line with Contur's own routines and guidelines. Search, digital signing and automatic reminders save time, and the metadata gives us a stronger basis for governance and follow-up.”
Sigmund Jensen, Head of Procurement, Contur
