Deals fall through when paperwork gets delayed. Revenue gets delayed, opportunities are missed, and competitors swoop in.
One of the most overlooked bottlenecks behind this delay is contract lifecycle time. Having realized this, many enterprises have turned to automation. By digitizing and automating parts of their contract lifecycle, they’re cutting turnaround time dramatically, some by as much as 50%.
In this article, we’ll dive into how they’re doing it and what you can learn from their playbook.
The Problem with Manual Contracting
Before we unpack the solutions, let’s understand where the delays originate:
- Fragmented workflows: Legal, finance, procurement, and business teams often work in silos. Documents get emailed back and forth, leading to different teams with different updated versions.
- Limited visibility: Without a central system, tracking a contract’s status is tricky. Managers are unsure whether a draft is awaiting legal review or is stuck with an approver.
- High-volume, low-value tasks: Legal teams take hours drafting repetitive clauses or filling out boilerplate terms that could be templated.
- Compliance & risk checks: While essential, manual compliance reviews add to the delay.
Multiply these inefficiencies across thousands of contracts per year, and the time and money lost is colossal.
The Automation Advantage
Automation steps in not to replace human judgment but to augment it. Enterprises adopting contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms and workflow automation tools are seeing gains across these key areas:
- Template & Clause Libraries: Pre-approved templates and clause banks mean legal teams aren’t starting from zero. Business users can self-serve standard contracts for low-risk deals, while legal steps in only to deal with non-standard terms.
- Automated Workflows: Instead of emailing PDFs around, automated routing sends contracts to the right people in sequence or even in parallel based on preset rules. Approvals and e-signatures happen seamlessly, shaving days off the process.
- Integrated Compliance: Automated checks flag missing clauses, risky terms, or regulatory non-compliance early. Some systems even use AI to highlight deviations from approved language, allowing faster risk assessment.
- Real-time Visibility: Centralized dashboards show where every contract stands, who it’s with, and how long it’s been there. This makes bottlenecks visible and therefore easier to address.
The 50% Time Reduction Playbook
Now, what does a 50% faster contract cycle look like in practice? Here are some patterns that usually appear across enterprises that have achieved it:
- Standardization First: They audit and standardize frequently used agreements like NDAs, vendor contracts, and sales agreements. Templating these reduces legal review needs.
- Early Stakeholder Buy-in: Automation initiatives succeed when stakeholders from legal, procurement, finance, and business teams are aligned. Everyone agrees on workflows and approval matrices before implementation.
- E-signature Adoption: Moving away from wet-ink signatures removes huge delays. Digital signing also enhances security and provides clear audit trails.
- Data, Not Just Documents: Treating contracts as data (not static files) lets companies extract and analyze key terms, renewal dates, and obligations. This speeds execution and informs better decisions later.
- Analytics and Continuous Improvement: Enterprises track contract cycle time metrics and continuously tweak workflows. The fastest organizations treat automation as an ongoing process rather than a one-time project.
Hidden Benefits Beyond Speed
While faster turnaround is the headline benefit, automation has several other perks:
- Risk Reduction: Standard templates and automated compliance checks lower legal and regulatory risks.
- Cost Savings: Legal teams spend less time on redundant chores, freeing them to focus on strategy.
- Better Relationships: Faster contract turnaround improves customer, vendor, and partner satisfaction. Nobody likes waiting weeks for paperwork.
- Revenue Acceleration: When deals close faster, revenue gets recognized sooner, meaning improved cash flow.
The Future: AI-powered Contracting
The next wave of automation is AI-driven. Machine learning models are already being used to:
- Analyze and compare third-party contracts against internal standards.
- Suggest redlines automatically based on past negotiations.
- Predict bottlenecks before they occur.
These capabilities point to a future where contract processes are even faster and smarter.
Takeaway
Time kills deals. Enterprises that recognize this are turning contracting into a competitive moat. With automation, they’re doing more than just halving cycle times. Reducing risk. Cutting costs. Winning partners.
The question isn’t whether automation can help; it’s how soon you’ll start using it to close deals twice as fast.