Crossing the AI Chasm: The Need for Speed Drives Use

To get some clarity and cross the contract AI chasm,  we have partnered with World Commerce & Contracting to conduct the first-ever, comprehensive benchmark study on the benefits, barriers, and usage of AI within contract management. In this part of our series "Crossing the Contract AI Chasm", we dive deep into our final sixth trend: The collective drive to use AI solutions is a need for speed and efficiency.

Our findings

If our survey results have reinforced anything, it’s that organizations of all sizes have a need for speed in today’s virtual world. Business practices have changed greatly in the last two years, catapulting contract management and everything tied to it into the digital age.

40% of respondents ranked increased speed and efficiency the top business driver for implementing an AI tool. This demonstrates that there is still work to be done in educating decision-makers about what can be achieved at an organizational level through effective contract management. While efficiency is certainly a benefit of AI, the value reaches far beyond that alone.

Nearly 50% of respondents believe that AI will contribute to great improvements in contract efficiency in the next two to three years, but is it possible that timeline could be accelerated if organizations could find the resources to properly train and deploy these tools? Those benefits include resource and cost savings and improved risk management.

Key Considerations

Data first, automation second

AI algorithms need data to function properly and lots of it. For organizations looking to benefit from AI in contract management, there are two considerations to keep in mind:

1. You need to have your contract documents in a machine-readable format in order to provide the AI tool samples of key documents to learn from.
2. You need to be willing to work with the AI tool to train it on how to look at your specific agreements.

The first step is deeper understanding

There needs to be a deeper understanding of AI and what it can achieve. Without that understanding, there will surely be more failed implementations in the future. Building the business case for AI is much easier when its capabilities and benefits are clearly mapped to an organization’s goals and KPIs.

To read the full benchmark report, click here.

To see what an AI-charged solution can do for you, check out our Lifecycle AI page! If one of your top priorities for the next few months is to implement a CLM solution, request a demo!