Companies are investing millions in customer experience platforms that promise real-time insights and personalization. But the procurement teams that purchase these systems often operate without transparency themselves.
According to a survey by Vallor, a procurement platform for AI agents, only 48 percent of procurement and legal professionals in medium and large organizations say they have clear, centralized access to contracts. The rest pieces together contracts from shared drives, email threads, and scattered tools, keeping commitments and deadlines hidden where no one can see them until it's too late.
Manual processes and fragmented storage of procurement agreements slow adoption of new technologies and negatively impact ROI.
The survey found that around 59 percent of professionals still perform contract review and redlining manually, 46 percent track renewals manually, and 44 percent generate reports without using any form of automation.
It's a stunning irony that the same companies struggling to modernize the customer experience with AI-driven insights and instant personalization often run their own sourcing operations in spreadsheets and email chains.
Vallor CEO Antonio Goncalves told CX Today:
“Companies spend millions on CX tools, but once contracts are signed, business and CX teams can’t quickly find what’s inside them to actually serve customers.”
This mismatch undermines the agility leaders seek because when procurement teams can't see terms, timelines, or value commitments, the entire customer experience chain slows down.
The hidden costs of CX procurement inefficiencies
Poor visibility into CX technology investments has a noticeable impact on business operations. More than half of Vallor survey respondents said it takes between 30 minutes and 2 hours to find and validate a single contract clause, delaying execution and supplier onboarding.
Delays in onboarding with providers due to inefficient contract processing processes in turn lead to delayed value creation. And by missing SLAs or renewal terms, companies risk customer-impacting disruptions and wasted spend.
Given the financial strain, nearly one in three respondents to Vallor's survey said their companies missed out on rebates, rebates or commitments because their agreements were inaccessible or poorly tracked. This can result in millions of dollars in unclaimed value.
And as regulatory requirements increase—a record number of pages were published in the Federal Register last year—buried obligations like privacy or environmental clauses can become ticking time bombs.
From chaos to intelligence: AI as a CX enabler for procurement
It's clear that visibility and automation can help improve the implementation of procured systems, and 80 percent of professionals surveyed by Vallor rank these as critical for the next 12 months.
One way to address the problem is to use AI to automatically extract details of obligations from contracts and display renewals. Integration with ERP and supplier systems can further increase efficiency.
According to Vallor, there is potential for AI agents to transform contract management into a dynamic, self-monitoring system. Goncalves said:
“AI contract visibility gives everyone instant answers about pricing, SLAs, service commitments and entitlements without having to dig through files. Your team can respond to customer needs in real time instead of waiting days for teams to search for contract terms.”
This shift mirrors what AI agents in customer service platforms are already doing with companies' customer data, turning it into actionable insights and proactive engagement.
“Contracts are the operating system of procurement, yet they are still treated like static PDFs,” Goncalves noted, advocating for companies to turn contracts into searchable “living assets.”
“Active contracts allow you to monitor provider performance, identify pricing thresholds, and automatically detect redundant tools.”
Procurement as a CX advantage
Ultimately, procurement is a direct lever for customer experience beyond cost savings and risk mitigation.
When buyers can integrate their customer experience technologies more quickly and realize the full value of the agreements they negotiate, they enable the company to operate more efficiently.
Any contract delay or missed renewal impacts how quickly teams can roll out new tools and respond to customers with the level of service they expect.
By viewing contract transparency as a capability that impacts the customer experience rather than an operational necessity, companies can improve the customer journey itself.