Operational Inefficiencies: When Data is Missing
News
Research from the OECD and the European Commission shows that many institutions still rely on manual spreadsheets or fragmented systems to manage complex contract portfolios. This leads to duplicated work, scope creep, and failure to meet time-based milestones. In transport, housing, and infrastructure projects, poor monitoring has caused project delays ranging from 3 to 18 months, often with no clear record of cause.
While legal and financial risks from poor contract oversight are well documented, the operational impacts are often just as damaging—and far more pervasive. Research by the OECD and the European Commission has shown that many public sector institutions still manage complex contract portfolios using fragmented, manual methods. Spreadsheets, email chains, and PDFs remain the dominant tools, even in billion-dollar projects. As a result, performance monitoring is reactive, milestones are missed, and procurement teams are forced to rely on anecdotal reporting rather than structured data.
This has consequences across the entire delivery lifecycle. The OECD’s 2021 report on innovation in public procurement noted that 60% of large public contracts lacked even basic structured KPIs. In the EU, the 2022 report on infrastructure delivery identified timeline slippage ranging from 3 to 18 months, often because no one could confirm whether suppliers had delivered as agreed—or whether internal teams had received the necessary inputs. These delays are not only expensive, but they also reduce public confidence and complicate strategic planning.
Much of the inefficiency stems from the disconnect between procurement and delivery. Contracts are awarded based on defined scopes, but once in motion, tracking becomes ad hoc. In larger institutions, delivery teams may be entirely unaware of the original contract obligations. Without a centralised view, the organisation loses both accountability and institutional memory.
Digitising contract performance solves this problem at the root. By capturing data in real time supplier updates, milestone completions, compliance checklists; organisations can shift from reactive to proactive management. Teams spend less time chasing updates and more time identifying performance gaps. Leadership can see which suppliers are delivering, which are not, and where interventions are needed. Most importantly, it builds the capability to learn from past contracts to improve future ones.
Source: OECD, “Public Procurement for Innovation,” 2021; EC Report on EU Infrastructure Delivery, 2022.