The report debuts ahead of Agiloft’s presentation at the 2026 Gartner® Procurement Conference
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., September 15, 2026 – Agiloft, the global leader in data-first contract lifecycle management (CLM), today released new research revealing a significant shift in enterprise contracting: procurement has taken control. According to the study of 2,005 senior procurement leaders across the U.S. and U.K., 82% say procurement now fully owns or leads the supplier contract lifecycle before legal involvement is required, and 81% say their organizations have shifted more contract ownership or approval authority toward procurement in just the past two years.
Greater control has also exposed a persistent blind spot: whether the value negotiated in supplier agreements ultimately reaches the bottom line. Agiloft’s new report, “The Confidence Paradox: What Procurement Leaders Reveal About the Gap Between Negotiated and Realized Value”, finds that more than half (52%) of organizations failed to collect a contractual remedy in the past year because it was not tracked or triggered in time, while procurement leaders estimate at least 15% of supplier spend is off-contract.
“Procurement teams may be confident they are capturing negotiated value, but when more than half of organizations miss contractual remedies because they are not tracked in time, and when off-contract spend and pricing discrepancies remain this common, the issue is execution quality,” said Jason Barnwell, Chief Product Officer at Agiloft. “The value was agreed to, written down, and then too often lost somewhere between the contract, the purchase order, the invoice, and the systems people actually use to run the business. Teams have more authority and more technology at their disposal, yet significant value is still being left on the table.”
“Contracts carry the commitments and obligations that reflect the promises of the entire enterprise, and for procurement those promises show up in spend, supplier performance, remedies, pricing, and compliance,” adds Barnwell. “It’s one thing to negotiate a single agreement. It’s another to understand what those commitments mean in aggregate. That’s the problem space we care about at Agiloft: helping teams extract and catalog those promises, understand what the commitments are, and execute against them with greater consistency.”
Key findings include:
Procurement Takes the Lead
Procurement is assuming greater ownership of supplier contracting, with legal increasingly playing a supporting role.
- 82% of procurement teams now own or lead contracting before legal involvement is required, including 38% with full ownership and 44% that lead, with legal in a supporting or escalation role.
- 81% have shifted more contract ownership or approval authority toward procurement in the past two years, with 29% describing the shift as significant; just 1% say authority has moved in the opposite direction, toward legal.
More Authority, More Value at Risk
Despite Procurement’s expanding mandate, significant value continues to disappear between negotiation and execution.
- 97% are confident they systematically capture the full value of what was negotiated, even as the data reveals significant leakage after signature.
- 52% failed to collect a contractual remedy in the past year because it was not tracked or triggered in time; among organizations managing 10,001-50,000 active contracts, that rises to 74%.
- Procurement leaders estimate at least 15% of supplier spend flows outside contracted agreements, with 40% putting off-contract spend between 16-30%.
- 81% encounter discrepancies between invoiced and contracted prices at least occasionally, including 28% that experience them frequently or always.
Closing the Gap Between Contract and Execution
Disconnected systems are making it harder to ensure negotiated terms are carried through purchasing and payment.
- Only 36% automatically connect sourcing award terms to the resulting contract, while 57% rely on some manual re-entry.
- While 94% use some automated invoice validation against contract terms, only 46% have fully automated the process.
- 82% already have a procurement orchestration tool in place, are evaluating one or have one on their 12-month roadmap; just 2% say they aren't considering one.
The report identifies greater connectivity between contract data and the systems where agreements are executed as critical to closing the gap between negotiated and realized value. Agiloft’s data-first CLM platform and Agiloft Astra help organizations turn contract data into actionable intelligence that can flow across procurement workflows and the broader enterprise technology stack.
Agiloft Exhibiting at Gartner Procurement Conference, 2026
Agiloft will present findings from The Confidence Paradox at the Gartner Procurement Conference, where the company will also showcase its AI-driven approach to CLM at Booth #307.
Agiloft Senior Product Manager Alisha Ahuja will join Rush Medical Director of Procurement Christie Savage on Wednesday, September 16, from 11:15 to 11:45 a.m. PT in California Ballroom 5 for “Agiloft & Rush: The Real Work—and Results—of Scaling Procurement AI.” Drawing on Agiloft’s latest research and Rush’s real-world experience, the session will explore what it takes to scale AI across contracting and procurement and turn greater visibility and control into measurable results.
For full insights, download The Confidence Paradox: What Procurement Leaders Reveal About the Gap Between Negotiated and Realized Value.
GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
Methodology
The research was conducted by Censuswide among a sample of 2,005 Chief Procurement Officers and other senior leaders with procurement responsibility at companies with 250 or more employees across the U.S. and U.K. Data was collected between August 5 and August 20, 2026. Censuswide is a member of the Market Research Society and the British Polling Council, and a signatory of the Global Data Quality Pledge.
About Agiloft
Agiloft is a global leader in data-first contract lifecycle management (CLM), helping businesses improve outcomes. Its no-code CLM platform with embedded AI centralizes, automates, and governs contracts from request through renewal, reducing review times and integrating with 1,000+ of systems for real-time visibility. Astra, Agiloft’s contracts AI platform, unlocks post-signature data to drive better decisions across legal, procurement, sales, and finance teams. Backed by KKR, JMI Equity, and FTV Capital, Agiloft delivers strong performance with high implementation success and customer renewal rates, enabling organizations to create, control, and capture more value across industries today. Learn more at agiloft.com.
Media Contact
Angel Duan
Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Agiloft
(650) 780-6741 ext. 5775
angel.duan@agiloft.com
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