AI will Dominate Procurement Contract Management

For those of you still using paper contracts...

The future of procurement contract management is no longer about filling folders; it’s about unlocking strategic value with AI.

Most professionals still waste hours searching for critical contracts instead of leveraging technology to surface insights within seconds.

Wrestling with outdated spreadsheets and email threads drains your time, halts decision-making, and limits your career growth. Seriously… if you still think I’m talking crap, would you be bold enough to bet your career on this?

If you’re still hunting for information in messy archives, it’s time to admit that your manual processes aren’t just inefficient—they sabotage your potential.

Adopt an AI-driven contract repository to centralise data, free up bandwidth, and confidently step into the future of Procurement Contract Management.

The Surprising Stat You Need to Know

29% of the workforce touches contract management, yet most still slog through roughly 40 common friction points daily.

This means nearly a third of your organisation’s time, talent, and energy is spent on avoidable inefficiencies. When critical insights remain hidden in scattered documents, you’re risking not just compliance failures but also missed growth opportunities.

So many people talk about Procurement becoming a value generator — this is one genuine way to make it happen by getting useful data from your contracts, such as quickly understanding which contracts can be terminated for convenience if you need to make cuts fast.

This data matters because eliminating these frictions means you’re not just cutting costs—you’re steering your entire procurement function toward strategic influence. You’ll never get that prized seat at the table (I fucking hate this phrase but I genuinely needed to use it here…just vomming in my office bin…BRB 🤮).
Ready to put this into action?

How To Prolong Your Career In Procurement So You’re In The AI Driving Seat In The Future

You need to become a leader. This doesn’t mean getting that CPO title. It simply means you cultivate a sense of trust, credibility, and the ability to get shit done to a decent quality consistently.

And here’s an easy way to look good whilst delivering ridiculous value in your organisation while you get to learn about AI.

• Step 1: Start small by assessing current contract management processes—pinpoint the worst bottlenecks and introduce AI pilots to tackle them first.

• Step 2: Link contracts to fundamental data points like vendor names, categories, and relevant teams so that AI-driven insights emerge at a click.

• Step 3: Invest in agentic AI solutions that enhance your negotiating power and decision-making, allowing you to spend time on strategy instead of searching for documents (future state…we’re not there yet for most teams. You could build this yourself if you’re handy with code but I doubt your IT team will support this. I’m including this here to keep you thinking).

Because if you’re not leveraging AI now, you’ll be chasing the curve instead of shaping the future. Procurement contracts are such a sweet spot for this level of testing.

You might still wonder why this matters so much—here’s why.

Here’s Why You Should Master AI In Procurement In 2025

Mastering AI in procurement will not only greatly improve your contract management for procurement contracts—but also elevate your entire career trajectory.

First, AI-driven insights transform contracts from static documents into dynamic assets that proactively flag risks and highlight opportunities. Second, advanced analytics lets you negotiate smarter, uncover hidden savings, and respond rapidly to market changes. Third, by investing in AI mastery, you position yourself as a forward-looking leader, someone who guides teams and influences strategy at the highest level.

Procurement teams of the future will have people responsible for AI.

Head of AI, Chief AI Officers, etc will be common place roles as organisation seek to gain huge value from the promises of AI.

The lesson is that by adopting technology ahead of the curve, you stop reacting to problems and start anticipating them. Traditional procurement pros struggle with this. This is why you still see people shooting down tech and AI on platforms like LinkedIn, which has become an echo chamber for the most soul-destroying and backward thinking procurement chatter of late.

In procurement—as in life—the time you save is the leverage you gain.

Your career is hanging on this.

Some will say this is BS.

All I’ll say is this: Enjoy unemployment.

Before you go, grab the Chat GPT 4o Prompt below to help you with this:

Seriously, if you want to try this out in your organisation or play around with hypotheticals to convince your stakeholders, use this prompt.

All you need to do is add information into the [Inputs] in the first section.