How Poor Contract Visibility Increases Legal and Financial Risk (And How to Fix It)

Poor contract visibility may be putting your organization at risk.

Studies show that 8-11% of negotiated value leaks opens in a new tab out through auto-renewals, rogue purchasing, and missed discounts. Additionally, a landmark study from Deloitte and Docusign shows that $2 trillion in global economic value is destroyed annually by poor agreement management opens in a new tab.

Organizations are addressing the “contract invisibility” challenge by using Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM). This AI-powered technology automates agreement workflows to improve contract creation, negotiation, and storage while enhancing data accessibility. Modernizing the agreement lifecycle saves time, helps reduce the risk of litigation stemming from missing clauses and misplaced agreements, and accelerates time to revenue.

How does intelligent agreement management reduce legal and financial risk?

Standardizing contract workflows and making the information inside them easier to find helps accelerate decision-making, reduce risk, and deliver a better customer experience.

According to recent research from Deloitte and Docusign, respondent organizations leveraging agentic workflows that purchased an end-to-end contracting solution in the last 12 months experienced 29% higher ROI opens in a new tab (i.e., time savings, cost avoidance, cost savings, and revenue uplift) than those that didn’t.  

In addition, 81% of respondents who purchased an end-to-end contracting management solution experienced improved agreement accuracy. In contrast, only 66% of those who did not implement such a solution reported accuracy improvements.

When it comes to agreement storage, AI-enabled centralized repositories are delivering measurable benefits. The same Deloitte-Docusign study shows 35% of respondents cited “contract storage and categorization” as a key capability contributing to higher ROI.

What are the most common contract visibility challenges organizations face?

Crete United is a national network of leading mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and building automation specialists. The company helps customers complete complex projects safely, on time, and with confidence.

At Crete United, every agreement contains critical details about scope, timelines, responsibilities, approvals, and financial obligations that can affect how projects are executed. As the network grew, it became more challenging to maintain access and visibility into that important contract data.

Jonathan Pettus, Contract Administrator at Crete United, says, “We realized the old way of conducting business wasn't going to work anymore.”

“The biggest hurdle standing in our way was a lack of visibility. We had no centralized contract repository. We didn't know what we had signed up for contractually, our obligations through those agreements, or the financial risk and exposure assigned to them.”

How can AI-powered agreement management reduce risk and accelerate deal cycles?

Crete United selected the Docusign IAM platform as the foundation for its agreement transformation initiative, reducing contract negotiation times by 80%, improving deal execution speed by 90%, and increasing proposal response times by 50%. Their use of AI playbooks has resulted in a 90% acceptance rate for redlines from counterparties.

The platform’s Agreement Desk functionality allows Crete United to establish a single centralized environment for creating, negotiating, and managing contracts across its network of operating companies. Through Agreement Manager, team members can now search for, organize, and understand agreements in a single location, making critical contract information easier to find and act on. Teams use this information to make more informed decisions and manage risk throughout a customer engagement. 

“Through leveraging AI, not only are we able to quickly identify issues,” Pettus says, “we're able to ask questions in layman's terms and get responses that allow us—cross-functionally as a team—to establish what risk looks like.”

With visibility established, the organization next implemented AI-Assisted Review with custom playbooks that help teams quickly identify contractual risks, assess proposed changes, and negotiate agreements more effectively. 

By allowing team members to ask questions in conversational language and receive clear explanations, it’s much easier to evaluate and understand complex agreements with confidence.

Docusign named Crete United a 2026 Global Customer Award Winner in the AI Innovators category. This award celebrates organizations that move beyond traditional methods, using AI-driven tools and technologies to inject intelligence, speed, and precision into every stage of the agreement lifecycle—from creation and negotiation to execution and post-signature management.

"With Docusign, our teams have gained greater visibility into financial risk and contractual obligations, enabling a more disciplined approach to redline reviews and better-informed decision making,” says Andy Swanson, Chief Revenue Officer at Crete United. “This delivers meaningful value not only for our organization, but also for our customers."

How is AI changing the role of contract administrators?

Pettus has seen his own role in contract administration evolve since Crete United introduced IAM into its contract management workflows.

“It’s bringing decision-making back to the business,” Pettus says.

In the past, any time a proposed contract was presented to his department, they would need to escalate it for legal review. Today, “we now have the tools and resources to conduct that review ourselves. Worst-case scenario, we have a specific question that has been fully vetted that we can take to the attorney, thus reducing our hours and overall expense.”

Looking forward, Pettus is eager to offer well-earned advice to organizations just beginning their AI and digital transformation journey.

“Embrace it,”Pettus says. “The tools and resources can be customized and structured in a way that enhances your current day-to-day operation and shouldn't be viewed as a challenge.”

He also has some words of wisdom for the “past self” who was sitting in his seat just a year ago: “It's going to be okay.” 

“We had good foundational agreement structure, but we were losing visibility to those contracts,” Pettus says. “It's a very scary thing to enter legal-related conversations and not know where the contracts, purchase orders, and other references reside. Having a centralized tool and resource to bridge all those avenues together has been pivotal for us.”