Getting Started (and Scaling) with AI in Contracting: Maturity Model and Best Practices

Many organizations know AI is beginning to reshape contracting, but feel stuck on three questions: Where do we start? How do we scale? And how do we build enough trust that legal, procurement, and commercial teams will actually use it? 

The hesitation is understandable. Contracting is one of the most risk-sensitive functions in the enterprise. Contract data is often scattered across systems, templates vary widely, and repositories are fragmented or incomplete. Trust—especially from legal—is carefully built and can be lost quickly if processes or technology introduce new risks. 

But standing still is becoming harder to justify. The pressure to modernize contracting operations is growing. World Commerce & Contracting reports that contracting inefficiencies consume a significant share of legal and commercial teams’ time—much of it tied to manual review, negotiation, and tracking obligations. Gartner’s legal and compliance outlook notes that high-performing General Counsel are prioritizing AI adoption and advanced contract analytics to reduce exposure and control costs.  

To achieve lasting impact with AI in contracting, organizations need a clear and practical roadmap. As you advance, each stage lays the groundwork for the next, building confidence and capability. The model below captures the three stages we observe across Conga and Forsys clients and explains how to progress through them. 

Stage 1: Rule-Based Automation 

From manual steps to consistent, automated workflows 

Rule-based automation is the bedrock on which every advanced capability depends.  

At this stage, organizations finally bring order to the chaos:  

• Standardized templates and clause libraries replace ad-hoc drafting. 
• Automated approval workflows route deals based on size, region, or risk. 
• Basic obligation tracking and renewal reminders ensure nothing gets lost after signature.  
• Version control and governance tighten up how contracts and playbooks evolve, eliminating the guesswork of which document is the “real” one. 

The impact is immediate: faster cycle times, fewer errors, and far more consistent contracting. Just as importantly, rule-based automation exposes the real structural issues that AI will later need to solve: data gaps, process bottlenecks, and policy ambiguity. 

It’s the moment when organizations stop firefighting and start seeing their contracting operations clearly enough to modernize them. 

Once this foundation is in place, organizations are ready for something more powerful: visibility. 

Stage 2: Analytics Dashboards and Contract Intelligence 

From “what’s in this contract?” to “what’s in all of our contracts?” 

AI-driven contract intelligence transforms static agreements into searchable, analyzable data that teams can actually act on. Instead of digging through PDFs or relying on institutional memory, leaders get a real-time view of what’s happening across their entire contract portfolio.  

The system automatically flags departures from standard clause positions, highlights risky language or missing protections, and tracks obligations and SLAs so nothing slips through the cracks. It surfaces renewal and pricing risks early—before they turn into revenue leakage—and reveals negotiation patterns by showing exactly where customers and suppliers consistently push back.  

The result is a contracting function that operates with visibility, precision, and foresight rather than guesswork. 

With data structured and insights flowing, the next step is to let AI not just inform decisions but start to act. 

Stage 3: AI Agents and Predictive Negotiation 

From “faster workflows” to “self-directing intelligence” 

Stage 3 is where AI agents enter the picture as digital colleagues embedded in the contracting process. For Forsys clients, this stage is powered by LexiShift, Forsys’s proprietary AI agent solution designed specifically for legal and commercial teams. 

LexiShift integrates deeply into the CLM environment, acting as an intelligent layer that connects data, legal requirements, and commercial goals. Rather than simply accelerating tasks, it makes data-driven decisions that improve deal outcomes—shifting contracting from a reactive administrative function into a strategic commercial advantage. 

LexiShift and the broader Stage 3 AI agent suite can: 

• Auto-draft first versions of NDAs, MSAs, and standard agreements using playbooks, clause libraries, and historical deal data 
• Drive negotiation proactively: Anticipating friction points, predicting supplier pushback, and recommending stronger legal and commercial positions with clear fallback strategies 
• Quantify impact in real time: Modeling how changes to pricing, rebates, liability, or service levels affect total contract value, margin, and risk exposure, so teams understand the monetary stakes of a negotiation while it is still in progress 
• Surface hidden dependencies: Identifying links to related agreements, volume commitments, or commercial terms that create risk or negotiation leverage 
• Orchestrate workflows: Routing contracts, coordinating stakeholder input, summarizing changes, and escalating stalled negotiations with recommended actions 
• Continuously benchmark against market standards: Ensuring terms stay competitive and defensible during negotiation 
• Track renewals and obligations proactively: Triggering alerts, generating negotiation briefs, and preparing teams with clear positions ahead of key milestones 
• Monitor contract compliance: Auditing invoices and real spend against contract terms and POs, and flagging overcharges or deviations in real time 
• Generate portfolio-level insights: Learning across thousands of agreements to improve playbooks, strengthen policy, and inform future negotiation strategy 

LexiShift in Action: A Renewal Transformed 

Here’s what it looks like when LexiShift turns a routine renewal into a truly proactive, insight-driven process: 

A global company is preparing to renegotiate a major supplier agreement. As the procurement manager opens the renewal in the CLM system, LexiShift immediately reviews the existing contract, the supplier’s performance history, related agreements, and the latest procurement playbook. 

Within seconds, it flags key issues—pricing that’s drifted above market benchmarks, service-level credits that fall short of current standards, and a liability cap that no longer matches the company’s risk profile. At the same time, it surfaces a less obvious dependency: volume commitments in a separate agreement that could be used as leverage in this negotiation. 

But LexiShift doesn’t stop at diagnosis. Based on prior negotiations with this supplier and similar vendors, it predicts likely points of pushback and recommends a negotiation strategy—where to hold firm, where to concede, and which fallback positions are most likely to land. 

Instead of starting from scratch, the team receives a pre-drafted renewal aligned with company policy, complete with fallback clauses and commercially optimized options—such as performance-based pricing or revised SLA structures tied to actual usage patterns. 

As redlining begins, LexiShift highlights nonstandard supplier language, suggests approved alternatives, and continuously models the financial impact of proposed changes—showing in real time how shifts in pricing, rebates, or penalties affect total contract value and margin. 

Behind the scenes, it routes key decisions to legal, finance, and operations, summarizing what’s changed and recommending a path forward so stakeholders can move quickly without sacrificing control. 

Before the supplier call, the team receives a concise negotiation brief outlining key risks, target positions, supplier behavior insights, and clear walk-away thresholds. 

What used to take multiple rounds of manual review and coordination across teams now happens in minutes—not just faster, but smarter—while people remain firmly in control of the final decisions. 

Quick wins at Stage 3 

• NDA auto-drafting with playbooks 
• Negotiation suggestions for a small set of high-volume agreements 
• Renewal and obligation alerts for top-tier customers and suppliers 
• Automated escalation when deals stall 

Long-term bets 

• Predictive negotiation strategies based on historical outcomes 
• Autonomous routing and triage of contracts across the enterprise  
• Portfolio-level optimization of terms, risk, and commercial outcomes 
• AI-driven risk scoring embedded into approval and pricing decisions 

The Conga–Forsys Path to Maturity 

Conga and Forsys work together to move clients through this maturity curve without losing sight of risk, governance, or business outcomes. 

• At Stage 1, Conga provides the CLM backbone and workflow automation; Forsys maps processes end-to-end and integrates CLM with CRM, pricing, configure, price, quote (CPQ), billing, and ERP systems. 
• At Stage 2, Conga’s contract intelligence turns documents into data; Forsys connects that data to revenue, compliance, and operational systems so insights drive action. 
• At Stage 3, Conga’s AI capabilities and Forsys’s proprietary LexiShift agent augment legal and commercial teams as true digital colleagues. LexiShift drives negotiation proactively, quantifies financial impact in real time, and orchestrates complex workflows — while Forsys designs the data, integration, and governance architecture that makes agentic AI safe, scalable, and auditable. 

The result is a contracting ecosystem that is:

• Data-driven instead of document-bound 
• Predictive instead of reactive 
• Connected to the full commerce chain, from lead to revenue 
• Governed with clear roles, rules, and oversight 

Start Here: The Three Priorities that Matter 

If you’re evaluating or implementing AI in contracting, three priorities stand out:

From there, the path is iterative: pilot → validate → scale. 

From Pilot to Performance 

AI won’t replace your teams—but it will redefine what they’re capable of. Conga and Forsys are already helping enterprises build that future: AI-ready data, connected systems, and intelligent workflows that span the entire lead-to-revenue lifecycle. And with LexiShift, Forsys brings a purpose-built AI agent that moves contracting from merely fast to truly intelligent. 

If you’re ready to move from “AI is coming” to “AI is working for us,” this is the moment to start.