How Advanced Agreement Management Helped 85% of Professionals Achieve Their Strategic Goals

Last year, Deloitte and Docusign established that agreement management ineffectiveness drives a $2 trillion loss in annual global economic value. The massive amount of lost or inaccessible data within contracts leads to 55 billion hours of time wasted.

Simply put, poor agreement management creates a massive problem for businesses around the world. 

This year, we wanted to identify ways to recapture this enormous amount of lost value. We surveyed over 1,400 business leaders globally to see how agreement management solutions can help organizations achieve their strategic and financial goals. Teams across the board derive significant value from agreement management–which covers a scope of solutions, processes, and workflows–with the most advanced capabilities yielding the greatest results.

Not only did we find that agreement management is essential for organizational productivity and growth, but it directly addresses many of the costly and time-consuming issues companies face, like manual processes, disconnected workflows, and compliance and security issues. Here’s a brief look at the findings of the report, and you can view the full study here. 

Agreement management is fundamental to the success of an organization

Tools that help remove friction and reduce redundant work from the agreement process have proven to be a game-changer, and leaders agree that it’s an executive-level priority. In fact, 77% of leaders at companies that outperformed their financial goals credit agreement management software to their success. 

And an important note for your C-Suite: Over 75% of respondents said that a senior leader is responsible for improving the agreement management process within their organization. 

The benefits don’t stop there. Agreement management was credited by 85% of respondents as a contributor to their strategic goals and 72% said it contributed to their financial goals.

Proven ways agreement management drives value

Respondents to the survey shared the top ways agreement management drives value at their organization: 

1. Removes friction for agreement stakeholders

2. Provides insights that offer new ways to capture more value and reduce risks 

3. Increases efficiency and improves the experience for employees and customers

Seeing a distinct and measurable impact across teams like sales, procurement, customer experience, HR, IT and legal makes the investment in agreement management worthwhile. For instance, sales leaders who invested in advanced agreement management saw 29% fewer contract-related deal delays and were three times as likely to exceed their contracting and deal execution metrics. 

Legal teams saw equally beneficial improvements. Respondents noted that those with advanced agreement management tools had an average of 21% fewer agreements out of compliance and outperformed their contract lifecycle time goals 2.4 times as often as their peers.

The transformative power of AI

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing agreement management. Leaders expect AI to optimize agreements, proactively engage customers, and extract valuable business insights.

There’s top-down buy-in for AI use throughout the agreement management process. In fact, 79% of executives across North America prioritize automation and AI capabilities, which is likely one of the reasons why the region processes agreements 8% faster than other areas. 

And that’s just the beginning for AI use within agreement management. Worldwide, business leaders have high expectations for AI's potential.  Nearly half of those surveyed (48%) believe AI's capacity to optimize contracts based on past performance would be essential for achieving business goals. And 35% of leaders identified customer experience and contract risk-scoring as areas where AI can make a significant impact.

Deloitte and Docusign research: Optimizing Agreement Management

This is just the tip of the iceberg; the full report offers in-depth analysis, detailed statistics, and regional breakdowns, along with invaluable insights for organizations looking to optimize their agreement management strategies. You can download Optimizing Agreement Management here, and if you’re ready to see how Docusign can take your agreement management processes to the next level, you can request a demo here.