Procurement is gaining greater authority over supplier contracts, but ownership is exposing a harder problem after negotiations end. Agiloft research finds that missed remedies, off-contract spending and invoice discrepancies continue even as procurement takes a larger role in the contract lifecycle.
The findings point to a widening distinction between negotiating value and actually realizing it. Greater control over contracts creates little advantage if commercial terms cannot be carried consistently into purchasing, invoicing and supplier management.
Procurement Takes Greater Control of Supplier Contracts
Agiloft found that 82% of procurement leaders say their teams fully own or lead the supplier contract lifecycle before legal involvement is required. That includes 38% reporting complete ownership and 44% saying procurement leads while legal provides support or handles escalations.
The change has accelerated. Some 81% said their organizations had transferred more contract ownership or approval authority toward procurement during the past two years, including 29% that described the change as significant. Just 1% reported authority moving in the opposite direction toward legal.
That expansion gives procurement greater influence over how negotiated supplier commitments are translated into contracts. It also increases accountability for what happens after signature.
The research reveals a striking disconnect between confidence and execution. While 97% of respondents said they were confident their organizations systematically capture the full value negotiated with suppliers, several operational measures indicate substantial leakage.
More than half of organizations, 52%, failed to collect a contractual remedy during the past year because it was not tracked or triggered in time. Among organizations managing between 10,001 and 50,000 active contracts, the figure increased to 74%.
Jason Barnwell, chief product officer at Agiloft, said the issue is execution quality, with value being lost between contracts, purchase orders, invoices and the systems organizations use to manage those processes.
Contract Value Breaks Down Between Systems
The problem extends beyond missed remedies. Procurement leaders estimate that at least 15% of supplier spending occurs outside contracted agreements, while 40% put their level of off-contract spending between 16% and 30%.
Pricing creates another control point. Agiloft found that 81% encounter discrepancies between contracted and invoiced prices at least occasionally. Twenty-eight percent experience those discrepancies frequently or always.
Those findings make contract management less a documentation issue than a transaction-control problem. Negotiated prices, rebates, service levels, penalties and other commercial terms have to remain connected to the transactions that determine whether the organization receives the value it secured during sourcing.
The technology connections remain incomplete. Only 36% automatically transfer sourcing award terms into the resulting contract, while 57% rely on some degree of manual re-entry. Although 94% use some form of automated invoice validation against contractual terms, only 46% have fully automated the process.
Interest in procurement orchestration reflects the pressure to connect these workflows. Agiloft found that 82% already have an orchestration tool, are evaluating one or have one on their 12-month roadmap. Only 2% said they were not considering one.
The Next Procurement Metric Sits After Signature
Greater contract ownership changes what procurement performance should measure. Savings agreed during sourcing can overstate realized value when remedies expire unused, purchases bypass agreements or invoices diverge from negotiated prices.
That makes post-signature performance increasingly important. Tracking the proportion of negotiated value actually realized could expose weaknesses that conventional savings measures miss and show whether greater procurement authority is translating into stronger commercial control. As ownership expands, the quality of the connections between sourcing, contracts, purchasing and payment may matter as much as the negotiation itself.