Contracts are created to deliver commercial outcomes, so shouldn’t contract management ensure they are realized?
That sounds logical. However, in most organizations, contract management is heavily skewed toward contract creation (drafting, negotiating, and signing), while the actual performance of those contracts gets less attention. Contract technology has traditionally reinforced this bias, prioritizing process efficiency over the delivery of outcomes. As a result, once the contract is signed, it’s often out of sight and out of mind, and its value, untracked, frequently begins to erode.
Contract management is evolving into a business-focused discipline focused on securing financial outcomes, enforcing commercial terms, and driving measurable value across the business, including procurement, finance, and operations.
That shift, from document control to business performance, is what defines Contract Performance Management.
Contract management systems have helped legal teams standardize authoring and workflows and supported procurement in streamlining supplier onboarding and approval processes.
But procurement and finance, the functions accountable for delivering commercial performance, remain underserved in their responsibility to translate contract commitments into operational and financial results. This gap directly impacts margins, cash flow, and supplier value.
Procurement teams are expected to manage supplier compliance, enforce negotiated terms, and ensure value delivery. But once contracts are signed, they often lose visibility into what’s actually happening.
Meanwhile, finance is left chasing outcomes without visibility into the upstream agreements that shape them.
Contract Performance Management (CPM) changes that by giving procurement and finance the shared visibility, insight, and control they need to close the value gap.
Most people think of working capital as a finance issue, but it’s also a procurement opportunity. Early payments to suppliers, late payments from customers and non-standard payment terms aren’t just accounting anomalies — they’re signs of commercial value leakage.
With CPM, procurement gains the power to monitor, enforce, and renegotiate commercial terms - proactively.
Imagine the ability to see $14.5M trapped across 90 customer and supplier contracts. 60% of which are up for renewal in 90 days, with a list of what to fix and who to call.
This outcome isn’t theoretical. It’s targeted, contract-by-contract action that protects the value procurement worked hard to negotiate and protect against the effects of rogue contracting.
If you work in procurement or finance, you already know that the quality of your decisions depends on the quality of your information.
You also know that when it comes to contracts, the most basic requirement is knowing exactly which agreements are active and where they are.
For many organizations, that confidence is missing. The problem is not new, but it is often underestimated, until a renewal is missed, a key clause can’t be located, or an acquisition reveals a trail of unmanaged agreements.
Contract discovery locates these agreements, creating a foundation for performance tracking and taking the first critical step in reclaiming lost value.
To support the teams that rely on contracts to do their jobs, the focus of contract management technology needs to shift from managing documents and processes to realizing outcomes.
By shifting to active performance tracking, Contract Performance Management CPM puts procurement and finance back in control, enabling them to enforce terms, reduce leakage, and unlock value at scale.
To learn more, explore our contract discovery offering or working capital solution.