Tips & Tricks

Why Retail & E-commerce Need Automated Contract Management

Every supplier agreement impacts the cost of goods and inventory; every partnership contract can open (or close) new revenue streams. Automated contract management gives you the visibility, speed, and control to maximize these relationships.

Aditya P

10 Sep 2025 • 8 min read

Retail and e-commerce businesses run on speed, agility, and scale. But in the rush to launch new products, scale logistics, or onboard partners, there's one thing that often gets left behind: the contract.

It’s the unspoken infrastructure behind every shelf-stocking, shipment-tracking, or influencer-campaign success.

Managing contracts with spreadsheets and shared drives might work when you’re starting out, but like trying to manage your warehouse on sticky notes, it doesn’t scale. Especially when the numbers look like this:

60 to 80% of all B2B transactions are governed by a contract
A Fortune 1000 company may juggle between 20,000 to 40,000 active contracts at any time
Almost 1 in 4 employees in the average company touches contracts in some capacity

Retail teams can’t afford these inefficiencies. Contracts are involved in every part of your business, and when you don’t manage them well, the hidden costs stack up fast.

In this blog, we explore why retailers need to rethink how they manage contracts, the pain points of manual systems, and how automated contract lifecycle management (CLM) can offer real, measurable advantages.

Contracts Are Everywhere in Retail

Every product on the shelf, every delivery at the dock, every seasonal hire, and every campaign going live has a contract behind it. These agreements shape pricing, timelines, responsibilities, and compliance.

Some of the most common ones include:

Supplier & Sourcing Agreements

These control product supply, pricing, and fulfillment timelines for every vendor relationship. Any lapse can cause stockouts or margin erosion.

Franchise and Leasing Contracts

These govern store locations, commercial space, and dealership operations with renewal and compliance terms that can’t be missed.

Marketplace & Distribution Contracts

These agreements are behind E-commerce marketplace listing agreements and 3PL/logistics operations. These contracts often contain performance thresholds, penalties, and delivery SLAs.

Influencer and Affiliate Agreements

These Cover short-term but high-visibility brand campaigns. These change often and require precise term management.

Seasonal Staff Contracts

Temporary hiring surges (like during sale season) also means onboarding dozens of short-term employment contracts efficiently.

It’s no surprise that retail leaders are investing heavily in digital solutions here.

In 2021, 80% of retailers planned moderate to major investments in digitizing the supply chain, including smarter contract management to support that agility.
Gartner notes that contract work can consume up to 50% of legal team capacity in large organizations. Without modern tools, the sheer volume and variety of agreements in retail can quickly become unmanageable.

Where Manual Contract Processes Fall Short

Where manual contract management falls short

Manual contract management creates several pain points that can slow down the business and hurt the bottom line:

When approvals rely on email threads, a single busy period can cause a huge backlog. For your retail business, slow workflows are costly.
Studies show inefficient contract workflows add 3 to 4 weeks of delay on average, slowing down product launches or store openings.
Critically, almost all business development leaders say they face challenges in the contracting process, and 50% report that contract inefficiencies have caused lost sales or deals.

Delayed Approvals Mean Missed Revenue

Tracking contract renewal dates or pricing review milestones through manual logs is unreliable at scale.
WorldCC warns that poor contract management leads to value leakage averaging about 9% of a contract’s revenue.
KPMG further found that up to 40% of contract value leakage is due to shortcomings in contract management.
For example, auto-renewals at higher rates or not claiming supplier rebates. In an industry with tight margins like retail, this leakage is substantial.
Without a central repository, different teams often work off different versions of the same contract. Locating the latest contract version or a specific clause is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Nearly 50% of businesses admit they lack a defined process for storing executed contracts.
90% of contract professionals say that finding a specific document is a challenge.
This leads to version mix-ups and teams working off outdated terms.
Without clear ownership or defined workflows, contract oversight becomes fragmented.
It’s often unclear who approved a change, who owns a given contract, or whether obligations are being met.
40% of organizations say it’s unclear who is responsible for various contract management tasks. This ambiguity makes it hard to enforce standard policies or prove compliance.
When audit or compliance teams request a history of contract changes or clause approvals, manual systems struggle to provide an audit trail.
89% of organizations rate their contracting process as not “very effective” in meeting business needs.
Such process gaps increase legal and regulatory risks, a serious concern in retail where vendor compliance (labor laws, safety standards, data protection, etc.) is scrutinized.

Lack of Visibility & Compliance

Poor Version Control Increases Legal and Operational Risk

Missed Renewals & Value Leakage

These challenges intensify when contract volumes inevitably grow as you expand products, markets, and partnerships.

Manual contracting not only wastes time but also exposes you to financial leakage, missed opportunities, and compliance failures under these conditions.

How Automation Helps You Stay Agile

As your operations grow, the tools you use to manage contracts need to grow with you. Manual tracking, email threads, and shared folders just can’t keep up with the speed and scale of modern retail.

A good contract management system helps you get ahead of delays, missed terms, and version mix-ups. Here’s how automation makes that possible:

Faster Approvals and Turnaround Times

Digital workflows help contracts move faster.
The system sends them to the right people, reminds them when action is needed, and shows you where things are stuck. This reduces turnaround times by up to 80%.
In retail, that speed can help you launch promotions on time, bring in new vendors faster, or close time-sensitive partnerships.

Centralized Repository & Search

Every contract (and every version) is stored in one secure platform, accessible to authorized users.
Search and filter tools mean a category manager or legal counsel can locate any clause or contract immediately.
Given that contract professionals otherwise spend up to 2 hours searching for specific terms in documents, this is a huge productivity boost.
Centralization also ensures that everyone is working with the latest approved template or version, reducing errors from version mix-ups.

Automated Alerts for Key Dates

CLM systems let you set automatic reminders for notice periods, renewal dates, price review milestones, and more.
CLM platforms let you set alerts for renewals, reviews, and notice periods.
This helps you stay ahead of pricing changes, vendor rate hikes, or missed rebate windows.
Tracking deadlines this way prevents losses that often go unnoticed in manual systems.
For instance, if a vendor contract is set to auto-renew with a 5% price increase, the system will flag it well in advance so the procurement team can renegotiate, avoiding silent profit erosion.

Standardized Templates and Clause Libraries

Legal and procurement teams can set up ready-to-use templates for common contracts. Business users can then create agreements faster, using terms that are already approved (e.g., standard payment terms, termination clauses, NDAs, etc.)
This saves time, reduces the chance of errors, and keeps your contracts aligned with company policy.
Templates help you handle high-volume contracts (like routine supplier agreements or partnership contracts) quickly, while ensuring important terms (like liability or data security clauses) aren’t edited unpredictably.
84% of contracting professionals feel pressure to simplify and standardize contracts, and doing so reduces legal risk and cuts negotiation time.

Real-Time Visibility and Audit-Ready Records

Every action on a contract (eg., edits, approvals, comments, signatures) is logged.
Managers can see exactly who made each change and when, with a full version history at clause level. This transparency is invaluable for compliance.
Suppose regulators or internal audit need transparency on how a certain term (say, a discount or an exclusivity clause) ended up in a contract. In that case, you can produce an audit trail in minutes instead of digging through email archives.
Automated CLM also provides dashboards and reports (e.g., how many contracts each department executed, how many are in negotiation, which suppliers have expiring agreements next quarter, etc.).
Better visibility helps you stay proactive and in control. Organizations with digital CLM report a 55% higher rate of contract compliance (adherence to standard terms and policies).

Integration with Business Systems

The best CLM systems connect with your other business software, like ERP or CRM. That way, contract terms don’t sit in isolation.
For example, if a supplier agreement includes a volume discount, your CLM can notify you when the threshold is met. Or it can flag delays by comparing delivery data to contract terms.
This makes contracts part of your day-to-day decisions, not something you revisit only when there’s a problem.

Overall, automation lets you collaborate in one workspace with other stakeholders across retail, legal and procurement, with all the information at your fingertips.

Instead of being an administrative burden, contracts can become a strategic enabler for growth. 81% of organizations want to utilize more contract automation, according to WorldCC surveys.

Business leaders recognize that efficient contracting is essential for agility.

As retail trends like omnichannel commerce, rapid supplier onboarding, and seasonal hiring continue to grow, having a modern CLM is becoming a competitive necessity.

A Smarter Path to Growth and ROI

For retail and e-commerce teams, better contract management is an important step toward faster growth and stronger control.

Consider the numbers:

A Deloitte study found that companies who invest in contracting excellence see far lower value leakage (as low as ~3% versus 9% on average).
A Total Economic Impact study reported a 121% to 356% return on investment for organizations using CLM systems.
Key benefits included faster deal cycles, better compliance, reduced legal costs, and improved vendor performance.
According to Deloitte, 70% of CFOs now see contract lifecycle automation as a core focus area for the next few years.

India is Catching On

Contract lifecycle management has historically been underinvested in across Indian industries, but that’s beginning to shift. As businesses scale and compliance requirements grow more complex, there’s a clear move toward smarter, tech-driven systems.

Organizations are no longer treating contracts as one-off documents. They’re starting to view them as living business assets that need structure, visibility, and accountability.

In the APAC region, including India, 71% of organizations report increased C-suite interest in improving contract management, which is higher than any other region.
Indian sectors such as retail, manufacturing, and BFSI are especially focused on digitizing contract workflows as part of broader modernization efforts.
This shift reflects a growing understanding: better contract lifecycle management leads to faster decisions, stronger compliance, and more sustainable growth.

Global Adoption is In Effect

Across industries, structured contract management has become essential for scaling operations. Global enterprises are setting an example by embedding digital CLM systems deep into their workflows.

Companies like Walmart and Unilever use enterprise CLM tools to manage tens of thousands of contracts.
These systems help them maintain consistency and move quickly across their supply chains, at a scale manual methods can’t support.

Conclusion

To sum up, moving to an automated contract management system is not just about “going paperless”; it’s about building a smarter, more responsive organization.

By eliminating routine contract bottlenecks, your team can focus on strategic work like analyzing supplier performance, negotiating better terms, and ensuring your contracts are delivering full value.

As WorldCC CEO Sally Guyer put it, the gap is widening between companies leading in contract management and “the rest”.

Retailers that invest in CLM now will be better equipped to drive growth, mitigate risks, and outpace competitors in the years ahead.

Give your retail business a competitive advantage and invest in the right CLM tool today: Explore Doqfy now.