How a Team of Three at Southwest Airlines Modernized Contracting

Learn how Conga Contracts for Salesforce powered Southwest Airlines’ commercial strategy during its largest transformation in company history

Table of contents

Business Outcomes

mins to generate a contract

+15

contract templates updated overnight in a single transformation sprint

Accelerated deal cycles

3-person team scaled to manage 1,000s of contracts monthly

Southwest Airlines – Customer Conversations

Challenge

After 50 years of open seating, Southwest Airlines announced the move to assigned seating beginning January 2026.

“What sounds like a simple change of the boarding process, ultimately changed everything about how we're going to market for our business travelers,” said Wagemann.

Fare names have changed. Products were reshuffled. And all the legal language within contracts needed to be revised and reviewed. This meant a major impact on the small team of three leading the Southwest Airlines' commercial contracting operation.

1,000s of Contracts. 15+ Templates. A Team of Three.

Responsible for processing 1,000s of contracts on a monthly basis, navigating a library of 15 or more templates, and coordinating continuous legal revisions, this team, until recently, administered all this work through a fragmented set of manual processes that existed almost entirely outside of Salesforce. Something had to give.

Back then, key systems weren’t fully connected, making it harder to access information and maintain real-time visibility. Contract communication still relied on manual steps outside Salesforce. As a result, entering into corporate partnerships went like this: copy-paste legal language into an email, wait, hope, countersign, email again. As the business evolved, updating contract language or scaling processes required increasingly more time and coordination.  

“Before Conga, our sales process was very disjointed...It was really hindering our speed to market,” said Wagemann.

Recognizing the opportunity to streamline operations and deliver a more seamless experience for both teams and customers, Southwest Business turned to Conga to help power its next stage of transformation. 

Solution

Southwest Business chose Conga Contracts for Salesforce to empower its team with innovative contract lifecycle management tools.

The Conga CLM solution automates the entire contracting process, from creation to renewal. The solution also integrates with other Conga products the team uses, including Conga Sign, which streamlines eSignature, and Conga Composer, which automatically selects the correct contract templates.  

Standing up a new CLM solution mid-transformation meant Wagemann and his team couldn’t just implement for today—they had to build for whatever came next. “With so many moving parts, it required us to get really agile, really quick,” said Wagemann. “We have about 15 different Conga templates available in our library, and 90% of them changed in one way or another.”

But with Conga’s CLM, the team was prepared.

"The move to Conga Contracts for Salesforce was something that really helped us plan for the future because we needed to know, on any given day, that we could suddenly make one product invalid or swap out another."

Jacob Wagemann

Salesforce Consultant @ Southwest Business, a division of Southwest Airlines

Results

By standardizing and automating its contract operations with Conga Contracts for Salesforce, Southwest Business has achieved significant results.  

By eliminating repetitive and manual tasks, the small team can handle the massive scope of creating 1,000s of contract records each month.
With automation and less friction, an account manager can generate a contract in five minutes, and potentially get it signed and back in another five minutes.
Since contracts live inside Salesforce alongside deals, opportunities lead directly into contracts for a smooth, end-to-end sales process.  
The team has the agility and speed to adapt to whatever comes their way. When Southwest's assigned seating announcement hit, they were able to instantly identify every template referencing 'want to get away fare' and update them fast.

A 20-person CLM team isn’t required to run world-class contracting, just the right tools. Southwest Airlines’ small team of three people modernized enter prize-scale contract operations using Conga, going from manual copy-paste chaos to five-minute contract generation, all inside Salesforce.

About the client:

Southwest Airlines

Dallas,TX

Products used:

Conga Contract Lifecyle Management (CLM)

Conga Sign

Conga Composer

Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) is a major American low-cost carrier headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Operating an all-Boeing 737 fleet, it is the largest domestic carrier in the U.S., flying to over 120 destinations across the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean.

FAQs

What contracting challenges was Southwest Business facing?

Fragmented systems and manual work outside Salesforce made it hard to access information and maintain real-time visibility. As the business evolved, updating contract language or scaling processes required more time and coordination.  
How does Conga Contracts for Salesforce solve the challenges they faced?

Conga Contracts for Salesforce automates the entire contracting process, from creation to renewal, inside Salesforce. The solution also integrates with other Conga products the team uses, including Conga Sign, which streamlines eSignature, and Conga Orchestrate, which automatically selects the correct contract templates.  
How does Conga Contracts for Salesforce prepare for the future?

When Southwest's assigned seating announcement hit, the team could instantly identify every template referencing 'want to get away fare' and update them fast.
The move to Conga Contracts for Salesforce helped the team execute at a major moment. And now the small team of three knows, that on any given day, they can execute contract changes with speed and agility.
How long does it take to generate a contract with Conga Contracts for Salesforce?

With Conga Contracts for Salesforce, teams can generate a contract in minutes directly from a Salesforce record. Because the solution pulls data already stored in Salesforce, reps and contract managers don't need to rekey information or switch between systems. Automated templates, pre-approved clause libraries, and built-in approval workflows mean a contract can go from request to signature-ready in a fraction of the time it takes with manual, document-based processes.
Actual time savings vary based on contract complexity, the number of approvers, and how your organization has configured its workflows. But customers who use Conga Contracts for Salesforce consistently report shorter contract cycles, fewer revision rounds, and faster deal closes compared to their previous processes.
What is Conga Contracts for Salesforce?
Conga Contracts for Salesforce is a contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution built natively for Salesforce. It gives sales, legal, and operations teams the tools to create, negotiate, approve, execute, and manage contracts without ever leaving the Salesforce platform.
With Conga Contracts for Salesforce, teams can:
- Generate contracts automatically using data already in Salesforce
- Manage redlines and version control through Microsoft Word-based negotiations
- Route contracts through configurable approval workflows
- Store executed agreements in a searchable, centralized repository
- Sync final contract data back to Salesforce records for full visibility
The result is a faster, more consistent contracting process that reduces manual work, limits legal risk, and keeps deals moving from close to signature.