The global study “Optimizing agreement management”, from Deloitte to the Docusign – a pioneer in the Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) category – points out that intelligent contract management tools are essential to the success of high-performing companies, according to 77% of those surveyed. Conducted in the first half of 2025 with more than 1,400 leaders of global companies from Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Canada, Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore, the survey reveals challenges and opportunities in digital transformation, as well as the growth potential of companies that exceeded their financial goals.
According to Norbert Otten, Senior Director of Solutions for Docusign in Latin America, "Effective agreement management is crucial to business success. AI-powered platforms enable you to transform agreements into strategic assets and their data into a competitive advantage. They are instrumental in minimizing risk, increasing productivity and efficiency—freeing employees to focus on more strategic tasks—streamline negotiations, and uncover previously hidden insights."
Given its value-generating potential, agreement management is now a priority at the executive level. According to the survey, in organizations of all sizes, more than 75% respondents indicated that there is a senior leader responsible for making agreement management more effective within a function and across the organization. This level of oversight, even in smaller organizations, underscores how essential agreement management has become to organizational success.
Best performance
The research also reveals that high-performing companies are enhancing their agreement management capabilities to deliver a competitive advantage, recognizing it as a driver of organizational performance: 85% of these respondents said that agreement management contributed to their strategic objectives, and 72% said it contributed to their financial objectives.
Advanced capabilities in agreement management: the importance of leadership in the process
Leaders with more advanced Contract Creation capabilities, or the ability to create contracts based on pre-populated templates, report exceeding their financial goals 55% more often than organizations that create agreements from scratch. Regarding most stages of the contract lifecycle, particularly regarding advanced capabilities, it was found that 19% of respondents exceed their strategic, financial, customer experience, and digital productivity goals more often than their peers.
Inefficient agreement management costs companies nearly $2 trillion annually.
These data reinforce the importance of optimizing contracts within organizations, as agreement management plays a strategic role. According to Deloitte's previous report for Docusign, inefficiencies in agreement management result in an annual loss of nearly $2 trillion in global economic value for companies, causing decreased productivity and lost revenue opportunities. Furthermore, corporations with disconnected contractual workflows spend, on average, 18% more time on contractual tasks, resulting in over 55 billion wasted hours per year. In Latin America, this figure is between $140 and $170 billion.
According to the previous survey, 2 in 5 companies worldwide are seeking solutions with more intelligent capabilities. Traditional contract lifecycle management focuses on highly negotiated agreements, leaving out other clauses, such as purchase orders and supplier renewals. Although viewed as a legal activity, contract management, when done well, brings significant benefits to CFOs and CROs. Future contract management solutions must meet the needs of buyers, managers, and end users.
To learn more about the research, visit this link.
About Docusign
Docusign brings agreements to life. More than 1.7 million customers and over a billion people in over 180 countries use Docusign solutions to accelerate their business processes and simplify their lives. With Intelligent Agreement Management, Docusign unlocks critical business data that was previously trapped in documents. Disconnected data in systems costs businesses time, money, and opportunities. Using Docusign’s Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform, businesses can now create, execute, and manage agreements with solutions built by the #1 eSignature and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) company.
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