Why Most Contracting Tools fail Global Enterprises—and What to Look for Instead

Enterprise teams today aren’t just managing contracts. They’re managing operational realities that are multi-dimensional, global, and constantly changing.

Whether it’s sourcing, compliance, ESG, legal, or regulatory obligations—the challenge is the same:

Traditional contracting tools weren’t designed for this scale or complexity.

Most assume simple hierarchies and linear workflows. But real-world contract data is anything but. It needs to flex across thousands—sometimes millions—of combinations tied to business units, locations, document types, owner departments, and evolving timelines.

^{Case in point: 9.7 million combinations. One system.}

In a recent deployment for a global retail major, we helped the PACS team build a central contract intelligence repository. Here’s what we encountered:

Every document had to be mapped to a specific location or factory

Each required classification across 15+ attributes: document type, legal entity, category, compliance area, and more

Documents were chronologically tagged from 1990 to 2050

The result? Over 9.7 million unique data permutations—all of which needed to be searchable, retrievable, and usable.

This isn’t a one-off. It’s the new normal for enterprise teams across industries.

^{Why most contracting tools fail}

Despite best intentions, most CLM tools simply can’t keep up. Peer review sites like G2 and Gartner are littered with complaints about clunky workflows, rigid hierarchies, and tools that break the moment complexity sets in.

Fundamentally, here’s why:

^{1. They treat each document in isolation}

For large vendors or multi-BU projects, every RFP, proposal, SOW, rate card, compliance report, and document is part of a larger narrative. But most systems can’t connect the dots. They treat each document as a standalone, making it hard to see the full picture.

What your teams need is the ability to:

Run comparisons across proposals

Track how SLAs, pricing, and terms have evolved

Query all project-linked documents in one view

^{2. They can’t handle deep classification}

Legacy tools were built for standard templates and approval chains. But enterprise contracts span millions of combinations—tied to factories, audits, compliance codes, and regulatory frameworks. Most systems weren’t built for that level of mapping.

^{3. They aren’t designed for business users}

What works for legal often falls short for procurement, PACS, compliance, or ESG teams. These users need tools that support how they work—without relying on legal teams or extensive training.

^{Think of it like this}

Legacy CLM tools are like early phones—built for one function. When the world moved to smartphones, those old systems couldn’t be updated. They had to be replaced.

Contract intelligence works the same way.

It’s not about storing PDFs. It’s about making contracts living sources of data—searchable, tagged, and connected to real action.