How Are AI and Automation Redefining Contract Management?

For too long, contract management has been treated as a back-office function. The data trapped inside those contracts, the obligations, the risks, the renewal windows and the supplier performance clauses, have remained largely invisible to those that most need it.

That is changing. Autonomous technologies are beginning to do what manual processes never could, surface insights from contract data at scale, flag risks before they materialise and give procurement teams the kind of visibility that transforms a reactive function into a genuinely strategic one.

In modern procurement functions, the question now is not whether AI, automation and advanced analytics will reshape contract lifecycle management (CLM), it is how organisations build the frameworks to gain the most strategic value.

“Tomorrow's CPO needs to understand that confidence in technology adoption isn't the same as the capability to govern it. Those who will succeed are the ones willing to continuously develop their own skills, get genuinely familiar with tools like AI, and build the commercial judgment that no algorithm can currently replicate. Procurement has always demanded breadth. That hasn't changed; it has only become more urgent,” says Sam Pemberton, CEO of Skill Dynamics.

Nina Kivioja, Vice President of Sourcing, Indirect Materials and Services at UPM

Nina Kivioja is a sourcing and procurement professional with experience across multiple categories, currently spearheading Indirect Sourcing at UPM – a material solutions company contributing to the sustainable transformation of society through renewable feedstocks.

Her career is built on transformation and scale. With proven experience in procurement transformation, developing large teams and supplier relationships and engaging stakeholders across multi-business and multi-site environments, Kivioja operates at the intersection of strategic influence and operational complexity. 

At Procurement LIVE, Kivioja will discuss how autonomous technologies are reshaping the way organisations manage contracts across the entire lifecycle. 

The session will look at the role of AI, automation and advanced analytics in improving visibility, reducing risk and unlocking value from contract data. 

Alongside her fellow speakers, she will share practical insights on building smarter, more agile contract management frameworks that support compliance, efficiency and better supplier relationships.

Autonomous Contract Management at Procurement LIVE

This session arrives at a moment when the contract management conversation has genuinely shifted. The tools now exist to achieve things that were not practically possible just a few years ago – reading contracts at volume, extracting structured data from unstructured text, identifying obligations and anomalies and connecting contract data to broader supplier performance metrics in real time.

But technology alone is not the answer. The organisations getting the most from contract AI are those that have first addressed the harder questions about data quality, governance, what compliance actually means in practice and how to build supplier relationships that hold up when a contract is tested.

Nina Kivioja will bring that grounded, systems-level perspective to the Procurement LIVE Stage, sharing practical insights on building contract management frameworks that are not just smarter, but more resilient.

The session forms part of the co-located Procurement LIVE, Supply Chain LIVE and Sustainability LIVE, returning to London on 8 and 9 September 2026. 

With Supply Chain LIVE and Sustainability LIVE running alongside, the audience will span senior procurement, supply chain and sustainability leaders — precisely the people responsible for deciding how their organisations invest in, govern and operationalise the next generation of contract management capability.

This autonomous contract management panel will run on  Day 1 of Procurement LIVE. Further speakers are still to be announced.

To hear from Nina Kivioja and the full speaker lineup, secure your tickets for Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE 2026.