An executive roundtable discussion, hosted by Workday and Evisort, introduced a compelling dialogue on how the contract lifecycle process today can be enhanced and transformed using both artificial intelligence and automation.

The focus was on accelerating compliance and extracting strategic enterprise-wide insights, helping legal, procurement and finance functions create strategic value. The room was peppered with senior delegates hailing from the telecommunications industry, through to financial services and beverage industries, sharing invaluable insights about their experiences in traditional and, in some instances, more advanced contract lifecycle management journeys.

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The discussion kicked off with the most immediate pain points affecting various business units today. A central theme sprang to the fore: the existence of silos within an organisation and the lack of a centralised view of contract data affecting procurement, compliance, legal and finance. This fragmentation often leads to a lack of cohesion and flow of information, especially when it comes to reporting.

Conversely, having a centralised dashboard with valuable insights drives cross-functional collaboration. The interplay between dependence on AI and the importance of having a human in the loop for the sake of oversight and integrity was another central theme. This highlighted the significance of human involvement in preparing adequate and ethical data sets to inform and develop AI within organisations – through playbooks, policy and regulation. Ultimately, it was clear that the value AI-native contract intelligence and CLM bring to the table includes: freeing up cognitive bandwidth from monotonous and repetitive tasks, and extracting valuable contract data to ensure continuous management of the contract lifecycle and vendor/client relationships.

It was immediately clear from the voices in the room, regardless of industry and business unit, that every organisation could develop a clear use case with a demonstrable return on investment on how a sophisticated system leveraging AI and CLM could deliver value in their business – be it from the beverage industry to banking and telecommunications.

An organisation’s “digital maturity” emerged as a key insight. It was identified as an attribute that could help organisations become “future fit” for AI-native contract intelligence and digitisation of their processes. Importantly, the discussion did not rule out the vast opportunities available to organisations with less mature digital infrastructure, allowing them to digitise without the need for complex integrations.

This led the conversation into a more technical discussion on how to navigate the intersection between legacy IT systems when faced with the reality and feasibility of increased usage of cloud solutions.

Workday offered sage advice on navigating the complexities related to integration, security and privacy concerns, which continued to surface and be ventilated as the conversation progressed. This included guidance on navigating existing enterprise resource planning within an organisation, understanding the true value of strategic partnerships and adopting a co-creation approach to integrating AI into the environment. Workday’s leadership in facilitating this discussion and offering practical insights underscored its commitment to driving innovation and transformation in contract management.

Conclusion

The roundtable concluded with actionable takeaways for organisations looking to harness the power of AI-native contract intelligence and CLM and highlighted the true cost of not doing so. In summary, organisations should:

Develop an AI digital strategy to bolster contract lifecycle management;
Ensure that internal processes are well documented and effectively transferrable to an AI source (thus building and continuously growing reliable data sources); and
Leverage AI to extract valuable insights, continuously monitor compliance and stakeholder relationships and free up creative and cognitive bandwidth to maximise human ingenuity.

Find an e-book on the Case for AI-Native Contract Intelligence here.