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How Porcia Works

Deploy once. Your agent runs continuously. Here’s what happens under the hood.

Discovery Architecture

Data Sources

1. Email Intelligence

When you connect your email (Gmail or Outlook), Porcia analyzes vendor communications to discover applications and extract key information. What we detect:
  • Vendor emails (invoices, renewals, updates)
  • Pricing information
  • Contract terms and renewal dates
  • License counts and user information
  • Payment confirmations
How it works:
  1. You connect via OAuth or set up email forwarding
  2. Our AI classifier scans emails for vendor communications
  3. We extract structured data (vendor name, pricing, dates)
  4. Vendors are matched to our global intelligence database
  5. Information appears in your dashboard
We only read emails from known vendor domains. Personal emails are never processed or stored.

2. SSO Discovery

Connect your identity provider to discover all applications your team accesses via single sign-on. Supported providers:
  • Google Workspace
  • Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD)
  • Okta
What we discover:
  • All SSO-enabled applications
  • User access patterns
  • Login frequency
  • Application usage by team member
How it works:
  1. You connect your SSO provider with admin permissions
  2. Porcia syncs your application catalog
  3. We track login events (with user consent)
  4. Applications are matched to our vendor database
  5. Usage data appears in your analytics
SSO integration requires admin permissions. We only read application metadata and login events - never user credentials or session data.

3. Browser Extension

Our privacy-first Chrome extension tracks which SaaS applications your team actually uses in their browser. What we track:
  • Domain names of SaaS applications
  • Time spent on each application
  • Active vs. idle time
  • Usage patterns over time
What we DON’T track:
  • Page content or form data
  • Keystrokes or mouse movements
  • Personal browsing (only known SaaS domains)
  • Credentials or sensitive information
How it works:
  1. Install the extension from Chrome Web Store
  2. Sign in with your Porcia account
  3. Extension monitors browser tabs locally
  4. Only domain names and duration are sent to Porcia
  5. Usage data appears in your dashboard
You can pause tracking anytime or exclude specific domains from the extension settings.
Coming Soon: Financial integrations with Brex, Ramp, QuickBooks, and Xero will provide automatic transaction tracking and even more granular spend data.

Vendor Matching & Intelligence

How We Match Vendors

When Porcia discovers a new application, we use a multi-step matching process:
  1. Domain Matching - Check if the domain matches a known vendor
  2. Fuzzy Matching - Handle variations in vendor names (e.g., “Salesforce” vs “Salesforce.com”)
  3. Alias Resolution - Match common aliases (e.g., “SFDC” → Salesforce)
  4. AI Categorization - Use AI to identify unknown vendors
  5. Manual Review - Flag uncertain matches for user confirmation

Global Vendor Intelligence

Porcia maintains a comprehensive database of SaaS vendors including:
  • Vendor Profiles - Company information, products, pricing tiers
  • Pricing Benchmarks - Anonymized pricing data from other Porcia users
  • Negotiation Playbooks - Proven strategies for each vendor
  • Contract Terms - Common clauses and gotchas
  • Relationship Mapping - Parent companies, acquisitions, partnerships
All pricing benchmarks are anonymized and aggregated. We never share your specific pricing with other users.

AI-Powered Features

Email Classification

Our AI automatically categorizes vendor emails:
  • Actionable - Requires response (renewals, invoices, contract changes)
  • Updates - Product announcements, feature releases
  • Marketing - Promotional content, newsletters

Negotiation Assistant

When you start a negotiation, our AI:
  1. Analyzes your current contract and pricing
  2. Compares to pricing benchmarks from similar companies
  3. Identifies negotiation leverage (market timing, competition, usage)
  4. Generates a negotiation strategy
  5. Drafts a professional negotiation email

Spend Optimization

Porcia continuously analyzes your SaaS stack to identify:
  • Duplicate Tools - Multiple tools serving the same purpose
  • Underutilized Licenses - Apps with low usage
  • Consolidation Opportunities - Vendors offering bundled pricing
  • Renewal Timing - Best time to negotiate based on vendor fiscal calendar

Data Security & Privacy

What We Store

  • Vendor names and domains
  • Pricing and contract information
  • Usage analytics (aggregated)
  • Email metadata (sender, subject, date)
  • Email content (stored encrypted, used for vendor data extraction)

What We DON’T Store

  • User credentials or passwords
  • Personal browsing history
  • Sensitive business data

Security Measures

  • Encryption - All data encrypted at rest and in transit (AES-256)
  • Access Control - Role-based permissions for team members
  • Audit Logs - Complete audit trail of all actions
  • Compliance - GDPR compliant
  • Data Retention - Email metadata retained for 90 days after disconnection, then automatically deleted
Security: Porcia follows industry-standard security practices including end-to-end encryption and role-based access control. Full security documentation coming soon.

Next Steps