Are You Still Managing Contracts Like It’s 2015? What’s Changed in Procurement.

If you think about it, procurement has come a long way in the past decade.  

Back in 2015, most teams were just beginning to standardize their source-to-pay processes. Tools like SAP and Coupa were rolling out across global organizations to bring structure to chaos. Soon after came legacy CLMs, built to digitize the contracting process and store agreements in a single system of record.

That worked. For a while.

But a decade later, those systems haven’t kept pace with how procurement works today, or what it’s accountable for.

^{Legacy Tools Were Built for Process. Today, You Need Performance.}

Procurement’s role has shifted dramatically. You’re no longer just negotiating good terms; you’re expected to deliver measurable savings, protect against volatility, and move fast in response to disruptions.

The old CLM approach, digitize, store, and forget, can’t support that.

Here’s the truth: Most contracts today still live as static documents. No visibility into active rebate tiers. No way to compare payment terms across suppliers. No signal when a clause deviates from your preferred language.

^{AI Is Not About Replacing Your Stack. It’s About Finally Using It.}

Today’s AI agents don’t ask you to rip out your source-to-pay stack or migrate every document. Instead, they sit on top, analyzing the contracts you already have, extracting the insights you wish you had, and putting them to work.

Think:

✔️ Spotting where liability or indemnity clauses deviate from the playbook

✔️ Knowing where you hold leverage during negotiations

✔️ Quantify claims across your global supplier contracts

✔️ Surfacing risks during black swan or post-M&A events

And unlike legacy CLMs, AI understands and adapts to your environment fast, no six-month rollout required.

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^{Take a global manufacturer we recently worked with.}

Their finance team had no visibility into contract data when reviewing vendor invoices for approval. If the payment terms were wrong? If the amount exceeded the contract value? No one knew, because contracts and invoices lived in separate worlds.

What they wanted was a way to link their in-house invoicing system with actual contract terms.

‍Here's how we helped them:

They brought in our contract intelligence platform, and within 4 weeks, the platform became a living, breathing platform with AI agents working continuously across their contract estate.

Now, when a vendor submits an invoice, the agents:

• Mapped the invoice to its corresponding master contract.

• Extracted key commercial terms like contract value and expiry date.

• Fed those key terms to their in-house invoicing system.

If the invoice violates agreed payment terms or exceeds contract value, the system flags it. Right there, within their existing system.

‍Finance got its visibility. And overpayment? Off the table.

^{This Is What Modern Procurement Looks Like}

We’ve moved from ERPs and S2Ps to glorified CLM repositories.

Now, the shift is clear: From static contract storage to dynamic contract intelligence.

‍Teams that used to take three months (and a room full of analysts) to analyze a contract portfolio? They’re now doing it in three weeks and keeping it running in real time.

So, if you’re still managing contracts like it’s 2015, ask yourself this:

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Are you chasing savings you already negotiated? Or finally realizing the value locked inside your contracts?

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Author: Ed Berger

VP, Global Sales, SimpliContract

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