Last week, I visited a cutting-edge AI startup in Austin. Their product? Mind-blowing. Their contract process? Straight out of 1995.
Here’s what I witnessed: A potential enterprise customer ready to sign a six-figure deal. The sales team celebrated. Then legal got involved. Three weeks later, they were still exchanging Word documents via email, with version numbers like “Contract_v23_FINAL_FINAL_actuallyFINAL.docx.”
Sound familiar?
The irony kills me. Companies spending millions on digital transformation—implementing AI, automating workflows, moving everything to the cloud—while their contract processes remain stuck in the Stone Age. It’s like building a Tesla but insisting on starting it with a hand crank.
The 1995 Problem Is Alive and Well
According to recent statistics, 77% of individuals said AI will impact their work in the next five years. Yet somehow, most tech companies are still managing contracts like we did when Windows 95 was revolutionary.
Here’s what the typical “modern” tech company contract process looks like:
Creation: Someone opens Microsoft Word (if they’re lucky, they find the right template on the third try).
Negotiation: Email ping-pong begins. “See attached.” “Please review changes.” “Is this the latest version?”
Approval: Print it out, walk it to legal, wait. Then to finance. Then to the CEO. Each with their own timeline.
Storage: Save it… somewhere. Shared drive? Someone’s desktop? That folder labeled “Contracts 2024 NEW”?
Tracking: “When does this renew?” Check the contract. If you can find it.
I’ve seen companies with AI-powered recommendation engines, sophisticated data analytics platforms, and real-time processing capabilities grind to a halt when someone asks, “Can we get this contract signed by Friday?”
The Real Cost of Your Stone Age Contract Process
Let’s talk numbers, because that’s what makes CFOs pay attention. Research shows that automation halves negotiation cycles, reducing inaccuracies and contributing to a $12 billion market. Meanwhile, 40 per cent of a contract’s value can be lost as a result of inefficient contract management processes.
Think about that. Nearly half your contract value, evaporating because you’re still treating contracts like paper documents in a digital world.
But it’s not just about money. Here’s what really happens:
Time Theft: Your highest-paid people—lawyers, executives, senior managers—spending hours on tasks a well-configured system could handle in minutes. I’ve watched VPs of Sales personally shepherd contracts through approval processes. That’s like using a Ferrari to deliver newspapers.
Innovation Paralysis: While your team is busy being a human workflow engine, your competitors are closing deals faster, iterating quicker, and capturing market share. AI implementation has led to a 39% reduction in contract lifecycle time, streamlining everything from drafting to approval.
The Compound Effect: Every slow contract creates a cascade. Sales cycles extend. Revenue recognition delays. Customer satisfaction drops. Employees get frustrated. It compounds.
One tech company I know calculated they were losing $50,000 per month just in delayed revenue recognition because contracts took so long to execute. That’s $600,000 annually—enough to hire several engineers or fund a new product line.
Why Tech Companies Are Particularly Bad at This
You’d think tech companies would be leading the charge on contract automation software. Instead, I see three patterns that keep them stuck:
- The Cobbler’s Children Syndrome “We’ll fix our internal processes after we ship this feature.” Sound familiar? Tech companies are so focused on building products for customers that they neglect their own operations. Internal efficiency always takes a backseat to the next release.
- The “We’re Different” Delusion “Our contracts are too complex for standard solutions.” “We need custom terms for every deal.” “Our process is unique.”
No, it’s not. You’re not special. 90% of your contracts follow the same patterns. You just haven’t taken the time to recognize them.
- The Integration Paralysis “We need it to integrate with our CRM, our ERP, our custom-built whatever.” Perfect integration becomes the enemy of progress. Meanwhile, you’re hemorrhaging value through your manual processes.
The 2025 Approach: What Modern Contract Management Actually Looks Like
Here’s the thing—fixing this isn’t about implementing some massive, complex system. The best transformations start small and focused. When companies ask me about implementing contract management, I tell them the same thing I learned building Concord: you don’t want to automate something until you’re sure it’s solving your real problem.
Modern contract management in 2025 looks like this:
Templates That Think: Your contracts aren’t unique snowflakes. They’re variations on themes. Modern systems recognize this, automatically populating terms based on deal type, customer tier, and your business rules.
Negotiation Without Email: Changes happen in one place, with full visibility and version control. No more “Which PDF has Sarah’s latest comments?”
Approval Workflows That Flow: The right person gets notified at the right time. Approvals happen in clicks, not meetings. Bottlenecks become visible immediately.
Intelligence, Not Just Storage: Your contracts become queryable data. “Show me all contracts renewing in Q2” takes seconds, not days. Obligations, deadlines, and opportunities surface automatically.
Start Monday: Your 30-Day Quick Win Plan
Change feels overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s exactly how to start:
Week 1: Pick One Contract Type Choose your highest-volume, simplest contract. For most tech companies, it’s NDAs or standard sales agreements. Map the current process. Time it. Document the pain points.
Week 2: Simplify Before You Automate Before you look at any best contract lifecycle management software, simplify your template. Remove redundant clauses. Standardize language. Get legal and sales to agree on one version.
Week 3: Implement Basic Automation Start with e-signatures and basic workflow. Don’t try to integrate with every system yet. Just get contracts flowing digitally with automated routing.
Week 4: Measure and Expand Track time-to-signature before and after. Share the wins. Then pick your next contract type.
I’ve seen companies cut contract turnaround time by 70% in their first month just by focusing on one contract type. One startup reduced their sales contract process from 12 days to 36 hours. Their sales team literally threw a party.
The Future Is Already Here (Just Not Evenly Distributed)
Some companies get it. I work with a SaaS company that now generates and executes customer contracts in under 4 hours, start to finish. Their sales team can close deals the same day they’re verbally agreed. Their competitors still take weeks.
Another client discovered $2 million in auto-renewing contracts they’d forgotten about—all because they finally had visibility into their contract data. They renegotiated half of them and saved $400,000 annually.
But here’s what excites me most: We’re on the cusp of contracts becoming truly intelligent. Imagine contracts that:
- Automatically adjust terms based on market conditions
- Flag unusual requests before they become problems
- Suggest optimizations based on your historical data
- Connect seamlessly with your financial forecasting
This isn’t science fiction. It’s happening now at forward-thinking companies.
Your Move
Every day you delay is literally costing you money. While you’re reading this, deals are stalling in your pipeline because of contract bottlenecks. Value is leaking from existing agreements you can’t properly track. Your best people are wasting time on administrative tasks.
The companies that win in 2025 won’t be the ones with the best products alone. They’ll be the ones that can move fastest—and that starts with how you handle the fundamental building blocks of business relationships: your contracts.
So here’s my challenge: Look at your contract process right now. Time how long your last deal took from verbal agreement to signature. Calculate how many hours of high-value time went into pushing paper.
Then ask yourself: Is this really how a tech company should operate in 2025?
The answer is obvious. The only question is whether you’ll do something about it.
Matt Lhoumeau is the co-founder and CEO of Concord, a contract management platform used by over 1,500 companies worldwide. Before founding Concord, Matt worked with Nicholas Sarkozy during the 2007 French presidential campaign and later spent six months manually managing 1,000 vendor contracts at a major telecom company—an experience that inspired him to transform how businesses handle agreements.
