Enterprises are investing millions into customer experience platforms that promise real-time insight and personalization. But the procurement teams buying those systems are often operating without visibility themselves.
Only 48 percent of procurement and legal professionals at mid-market and enterprise organizations report having clear, centralized access to contracts, according to a survey by Vallor, an AI-agent procurement platform. The rest piece together contracts from shared drives, email threads, and scattered tools, which buries obligations and deadlines where no one can see them until it’s too late.
Manual processes and fragmented storage of procurement agreements are slowing down tech onboarding and affecting ROI.
Around 59 percent of professionals still manage contract review and redlining by hand, 46 percent track renewals manually, and 44 percent generate reports without using any form of automation, the survey found.
It’s a striking irony that the same organizations racing to modernize customer experience with AI-driven insights and instant personalization are often running their own procurement operations on spreadsheets and email chains.
As Antonio Goncalves, Vallor’s CEO, told CX Today:
“Companies spend millions on CX tools but once contracts are signed, business and CX teams can’t quickly find what’s in them to actually service customers.”
This disconnect undermines the agility that leaders are aiming to achieve, because when procurement teams can’t see terms, deadlines or value commitments, the entire customer experience chain slows down.
The Hidden Cost of CX Procurement Inefficiencies
Poor visibility into investments in CX technology has a tangible impact on enterprise operations. More than half of the respondents to Vallor’s survey said it takes between 30 minutes and 2 hours to locate and validate a single contract clause, delaying execution and supplier onboarding.
In turn, delays in onboarding with vendors because of inefficient processes in dealing with contracts result in delayed time to value. And by missing SLAs or renewal terms, enterprises risk disruptions that affect customers as well as wasted spend.
Reflecting the financial toll, nearly 1 in 3 respondents to Vallor’s survey said their companies had missed rebates, discounts, or obligations because their agreements were inaccessible or poorly tracked. This can compound into millions of dollars in unclaimed value.
And with regulatory requirements on the rise—a record number of pages were published in the US Federal Register last year—buried obligations such as data privacy to environmental clauses can become ticking time bombs.
From Chaos to Intelligence: AI as the CX Enabler for Procurement
It’s clear that visibility and automation can help improve the implementation of procured systems, and 80 percent of professionals Vallor surveyed rank these as critical for the next 12 months.
One way to address the issue is to use AI to automatically extract details of obligations from contracts and flag renewals. Integration with ERP and vendor systems can further enhance efficiency.
There is potential for AI agents to transform contract management into a dynamic, self-monitoring system, according to Vallor. Goncalves said:
“AI contract visibility gives everyone instant answers about pricing, SLAs, service commitments, and entitlements without digging through files. Your team can respond to customer needs in real time instead of waiting days for teams to hunt down contract terms.”
This shift mirrors what AI agents in customer service platforms already do with enterprises’ customer data, extracting it into actionable insights and proactive engagement.
“Contracts are the operating system of procurement, yet they’re still treated like static PDFs,” Goncalves noted, advocating that enterprises turn contracts into searchable “living assets.”
“Living contracts let you monitor vendor performance, catch pricing thresholds, and spot redundant tools automatically.”
Procurement as a CX Advantage
Ultimately, beyond cost savings and risk mitigation, procurement is a direct lever for customer experience.
When buyers can onboard their customer experience technologies faster and unlock the full value of the agreements they have negotiated, they enable the business to operate more efficiently.
Every delayed contract or missed renewal affects how quickly teams can launch new tools and respond to customers with the level of service they expect.
By treating contract visibility as a capability that affects customer experience rather than an operational necessity, organizations can improve the customer journey itself.
