Revealed: The Contract Blind Spots Costing Businesses
Decentralised contract management and manual processes are undermining enterprise value while amplifying organisational risk.
That's according to research from the AI-powered contract management platform Vallor, which has published Manual Chaos to AI Opportunity: The State of Contract Management in 2025. The report reveals manual processes and scattered access to agreements are draining value and heightening risk across the enterprise.
While leaders overwhelmingly rank contract visibility and automation as critical priorities for the year ahead, most still operate in the dark, leaving money on the table and compliance in jeopardy.
Manual processes leave money on the table
Vallor's survey, which gathered the thoughts of procurement and legal professionals at both mid-market and enterprise organisations, shows that disconnect is widening.
Visibility is fractured, with just 48% of respondents saying they have clear and centralised access to contracts. The rest are leaning on tools like shared drives, email chains or scattered tools which can hide obligations and deadlines.
Despite the promise of AI, the majority (59%) still report undertaking reviews and redlining by hand. Almost half (46%) track renewals manually, while 44% generate reports without automation, slowing deals and burying teams in busywork.
Close to a third of respondents confess to missing rebates, discounts or obligations because agreements were inaccessible or poorly tracked.
These figures align with findings from other reports. Deloitte previously found poor agreement management practices and systems cost organisations nearly US$2tn in annual global economic value with value destruction happening unevenly across functions, but with an overwhelmingly negative impact on customer and partner relationships.
Antonio Goncalves, CEO of Vallor, says: "Contracts are the operating system of procurement, yet they're still treated like static PDFs.
"When teams can't see terms and obligations, they can't enforce them. This survey shows the cost isn't theoretical. Organisations are missing savings, delaying deals and inviting compliance exposure.
"It's time to turn contracts into living assets that are searchable, actionable and continuously monitored."
The economic cost of inaction
The impact is measurable across three pressure points:
Deal velocity: More than half of respondents say it takes 30 minutes to two hours to locate and validate a single clause, delaying execution and supplier onboarding.
Savings realisation: Missed incentives and unclaimed rebates compound across portfolios, shrinking negotiated value.
Compliance exposure: As regulatory volume climbs (with a record number of pages published in the Federal Register in 2024), buried obligations – from data privacy to environmental clauses – become ticking risks.
AI adoption moves from curiosity to imperative
Leaders see AI as the inflection point.
Roughly 20% report extensive use already, 34% are piloting and 33% are actively exploring. Top confidence builders include secure integrations with existing systems, demonstrable ROI and endorsement from legal and compliance.
The direction of travel is unmistakable: 80% of respondents rank improving contract visibility and automation as "important" or "critical" in the next 12 months.
"The winners will move first," Antonio adds.
"AI-powered contract intelligence doesn't just reduce manual toil; it closes the visibility gap that quietly erodes revenue and resilience. Those who adopt now will outpace peers on cost, compliance and supplier performance."