How does the system know which answer matches which question

Recognition occurs at question level, not at document level

The system reads the uploaded list and recognizes per question what it substantively concerns, regardless of how the buyer has phrased it. "Do you have an information security policy in compliance with a recognized standard?" and "Is an ISMS implemented?" are both linked to the same underlying answer, because they are in fact asking for the same substantiation: the existence and scope of a management system, usually with reference to Annex A of ISO/IEC 27001. The same recognition applies to questions about number of employees, turnover, countries of establishment or certification — the portals of banks, insurers and supply chain partners phrase those slightly differently, but the question behind the question is always the same.

Each answer in the chain file is directly linked to the evidence from which it follows: an extract, a policy sheet, a certificate, or the company's own entry in response to a question as how many employees the undertaking has. If the system does not recognize a question with sufficient certainty, or if the underlying source is missing, no answer is proposed — an open field appears instead of a guess. This also applies to composite questions, for example a list that in one line asks both about the ten measures of Article 21(2) of the NIS2 Directive and the corresponding evidence: the system splits such a question and searches for each part separately.

Matching is based on meaning, not on exact text

The fact that a system can link questions with different phrasing to the same answer does not follow from a single standard but from the fact that the underlying facts are uniformly established. Data such as the statutory name or the registration number under which the enterprise is registered are recorded in accordance with the Trade Register Act 2007 and are therefore unambiguous, which means that any question referring to that identity — however phrased — can refer to the same fixed answer. For topics such as sustainability, something similar applies: the VSME Sustainability Reporting Standard of EFRAG, developed in the framework of Directive (EU) 2022/2464, provides a fixed classification of data points to which buyers often implicitly refer, even if their own question is phrased differently.