As we mark the first anniversary of the CCM Institute, one thing is clear: this was never intended to be a traditional research body.
The past year demanded something very different. Market volatility, cost inflation, delivery risk, social expectations, and the rapid advance of AI created immediate, real-world questions that organisations and governments could not afford to wait years to answer. The Institute’s role was to provide dynamic, applied intelligence, research that informs decisions, underpins capability development, and translates directly into better commercial outcomes.
Looking beyond the amazing achievement of the global Contract Management Standard, a defining focus of the year was contract models, particularly Outcome-Based Contracting (OBC). Rather than promoting OBC as a policy aspiration, the Institute examined how it actually works in practice – where it delivers value, where it fails, and why. Our work highlighted the challenges: incentive design, outcome definition, data requirements, governance, and capability on both sides of the contract. This proved especially relevant for public agencies seeking better delivery without sacrificing affordability or accountability.
Equally important was our exploration of adaptability. As instability became the norm rather than the exception, the Institute examined how contracts can be designed to flex to changing conditions and reduce the likelihood of dispute. From pricing adjustment and hardship mechanisms to structured change control and shared governance, this work helped organizations move beyond rigid, risk-transfer models toward contracts that sustain performance under pressure. Allied to this, there was tremendous interest in how to better capture and retain value: we published extensive material on tightening the connection between contracts and financial performance.
Alongside this, the Institute delivered practical insight into the impact of AI on commercial and contracting practice. We investigated where AI already adds value – contract intelligence, obligation monitoring, risk identification – and where it depends on us overcoming weaknesses in data, process design, and ownership. A consistent message emerged: AI accelerates good commercial design, but magnifies poor design.
What has set the Institute apart is speed, relevance, and access. Through close connection with WorldCC and NCMA, the Institute can test ideas, validate findings, and respond quickly to practitioner and policy needs, drawing on the lived experience of more than 200,000 professionals worldwide. This ensures research does not sit on the shelf, but feeds directly into guidance, training, and decision-making.
Looking ahead, the demand for this kind of intelligence will only grow. Business and market conditions demand fresh thinking and fresh approaches to operating models, capability development, process design, skills deployment – not to mention the need for functional and behavioral shifts such as adaptive pricing, AI-enabled governance, outcome-based public delivery, and collaborative working models that drive transparency and trust.
One year on, the lesson is simple: in today’s environment, research must move at the speed of the market. The CCM Institute exists to make that possible.
“I will do one thing differently in every significant commercial engagement – question one assumption, challenge one standard, stay engaged one step further, build one relationship differently.”
At the end of last year, I ran a survey to ask what most often prevents win-win outcomes in negotiations. 45% of practitioners identified lack of trust, more than double any other factor. Time pressure came in at 19%, lack of authority at 16%, and lack of planning at just 11%.
This result tells us something important: negotiators want greater collaboration and recognize that the reason it fails is not because of technical deficiencies but because of relationships and behaviors that are inconsistent with the need for trust. What we lack is confidence in each other.
Trust doesn’t fail by accident. Its because either we fail to take the steps needed to create it, or it breaks down when organizations operate in adversarial systems that make collaboration irrational. For example, Sales teams often seek to engage directly with business stakeholders because they see procurement as an obstacle to their goals, a function that delays deals and imposes terms which optimize for legal protection over delivery outcomes. From a Procurement perspective, a defensive posture may reflect hard-earned experience with suppliers who overpromise to win deals, obscure unfavorable terms in complex proposals, and prioritize signatures over deliverability. Both sides contribute to the dysfunction, creating a self-reinforcing cycle where collaboration becomes impossible and everyone loses.
The Root Cause Is Structure
What we have is a structural problem embedded in how organizations design commercial interactions:
- Standard contract terms that allocate risk rather than seek a shared approach to its management
- Procurement models that emphasize control over enablement
- Success metrics that reward transaction completion rather than delivery outcomes
- Category management frameworks that constrain judgement and adaptation
- Commercial practices and templates designed for different times, different risks, different commercial environments and persist simply because “that’s how we do it”
These structures make trust irrational. Why would a supplier trust a customer armed with punitive contract terms? Why would procurement trust sales teams whose compensation depends on signatures, not performance? We aspire to win-win outcomes while maintaining win-lose systems.
The Resolution Challenge
If we’re serious about addressing the trust deficit, our 2026 resolution can’t be a simplistic mantra like “build better relationships” or “communicate more effectively.” We need an approach which at least starts to address root causes in a way that indicates sincere intent: redesigning commercial structures, challenging inherited standards, and fundamentally rethinking whether our sales and procurement models actually serve the outcomes we need. But we must be realistic: most practitioners can’t redesign their organization’s entire commercial model, rewrite the standard templates or change how success is measured. You don’t have that authority.
What you can do is start shifting how you personally operate.
Each of the following actions is a small contributor to greater trust, building gradually through consistent behavior, demonstrated judgement, and evidence that different approaches produce better outcomes. None will transform your organization immediately, but practitioners who consistently do things differently eventually become the leaders who design things differently. So choose one, choose several, and recognize that you truly can make a difference.
What You Can Actually Do – Starting Now
1. Ask “what are we actually trying to achieve?” before “what does the process require?”
Before defaulting to the standard approach, spend ten minutes understanding the business outcome this purchase or contract needs to enable. What does success look like in twelve months? What could cause this to fail during delivery? Let that context inform your conversations and decisions, even within existing constraints. This signals to stakeholders and counter-parties that you care about the actual goals, not just process compliance. It shifts the conversation from adversarial (you vs. them) to collaborative (shared problem-solving).
2. Document the consequences of standards
When a standard term causes contention, delay, higher pricing, or performance problems, document it. Build an evidence base about which inherited practices serve current needs and which don’t. Share it when opportunities arise to influence change – or be even bolder, and create a business case for change. Evidence-based arguments for change demonstrate that you’re acting on data and experience, not personal preference. This builds trust with leadership and counter-parties that you’re advocating for better outcomes, not just easier processes.
3. Stay engaged past signature
For at least one major contract, maintain involvement through early performance – attend delivery meetings, observe what’s working and what’s not, monitor which contract provisions helped and which created friction. Use that learning to inform your next negotiation. When you signal concern about outcomes, you alter assumptions about your motivations.
4. Build one bridge
Identify one internal stakeholder or one customer or supplier contact who currently sees you (or your organization generally) as an obstacle. Invest time in understanding their perspective, their pressures, their goals. Find one way to help them succeed that doesn’t compromise organizational interests. This is the most direct trust-building action. Small acts of collaboration – helping someone solve a problem, removing an unnecessary obstacle, sharing information – create reciprocity and goodwill that builds over time.
5. Develop judgement alongside method
Commit to reading one case study per month about commercial arrangements that succeeded or failed – business cases about projects, partnerships, or ventures where commercial structure enabled or prevented delivery. Use what you discover to support your negotiations. When you can explain why you’re recommending a particular approach based on delivery context rather than just citing policy, people trust your judgement. Expertise builds credibility; credibility builds trust.
6. Practice saying “I don’t know, but let’s find out”
When asked to apply a standard process to a non-standard situation, don’t pretend the process is adequate. Acknowledge complexity, seek input, adapt where you can. Model the behavior of an intelligent negotiator, who recognizes that discipline complements judgement, it doesn’t replace it. Admitting uncertainty and inviting collaboration signals that you value getting things right over being right, which fundamentally changes how others engage with you.
None of these actions will transform your organization overnight, but they will transform you:
- You’ll develop commercial awareness and judgement that makes you more valuable
- You’ll build relationships that give you more latitude to experiment
- You’ll accumulate evidence that makes the case for larger changes
- You’ll contribute to rebuilding trust in dozens of individual interactions
Trust is built on behavior that demonstrates empathy and a readiness to understanding different motivations. When 45% of practitioners say trust is the barrier to win-win outcomes, they’re identifying the symptom. The problem is commercial structures designed for adversarial relationships and practitioners who have learned to operate within those constraints rather than challenge them.
The 2026 Resolution
I will do one thing differently in every significant commercial engagement – question one assumption, challenge one standard, stay engaged one step further, build one relationship differently.
You can’t change the system overnight. But you can start where you have agency and build from there. And practitioners who consistently do things differently eventually become the leaders who design things differently
Start now. Start small. Start with trust.
Category management brought necessary discipline to procurement, segmenting spend, clarifying accountabilities and introducing structured planning. These achievements matter, but they address a different problem than the one organizations face today.
The gap between discipline and delivery
Category management organizes work around what is bought. Business performance depends on what is delivered. Customer commitments, infrastructure projects, digital transformation, and resilience initiatives rarely align with spend categories. They span multiple suppliers, contracts, functions, and jurisdictions.
Category management brings discipline within each element but doesn’t coordinate across them. It improves consistency but doesn’t ensure the right outcomes.
When method meets complexity
Category management works well when markets are stable and requirements are repeatable. Today’s commercial environment is characterized by uncertainty, rapid change, and interdependence. In these conditions, judgement often matters more than method—yet category management tends to prioritize framework adherence over adaptation to reality.
Consider stakeholder engagement. Category management frames this as consultation where procurement defines the commercial structure and others provide input. But procurement doesn’t determine what the organization is trying to achieve, which outcomes matter most, or what trade-offs are acceptable. It controls how things are bought, not whether what’s bought serves the right purpose.
Similarly, supplier performance management assumes failures are supplier-level issues. In reality, many arise between suppliers, between contracts, between commercial intent and operational reality. These systemic issues sit outside any category’s remit.
From discipline to integration
Today’s environment requires not just discipline but authority, judgement, and integration—a model that starts with outcomes and commitments, understands dependencies and interfaces, and adapts to reality.
In this model:
- Business leaders define purpose and priorities
- Commercial specialists design commitments that make priorities executable
- Procurement applies discipline to execution
This aligns with research from World Commerce & Contracting showing that disciplined processes alone don’t prevent value erosion during performance.
The real question
Category management introduced method, imposed discipline, improved consistency, and reduced randomness. These are foundational achievements, not final ones.
The question now is whether procurement can move beyond managing order toward supporting strategic accountability for outcomes. That choice will determine whether procurement remains a well-run function or becomes a strategic capability embedded in how organizations design and manage their commitments.
Building capability, not just structure
The transition to commercial integration is not primarily a structural challenge, it’s a capability challenge. Procurement professionals have become highly skilled at managing categories, running tenders, and enforcing compliance. These skills remain valuable, but they are not sufficient.
Commercial integration requires procurement teams to develop deeper commercial awareness and understanding of the full contracting lifecycle. They need to elevate to the role of commercial specialists, bridging the current gap between strategic intent and procurement operations. This means:
Seeing beyond the purchase: Understanding how contracts perform over time, where value erodes, how incentives shape behavior, and how risk allocation affects delivery capability. Category decisions must be made within this business context, not in isolation from it.
Moving from standards to solutions: Procurement has traditionally operated with a standardization mindset—standard templates, standard terms, standard processes. This approach promises efficiency but often delivers the opposite: contention during negotiation, higher prices as suppliers factor in onerous terms, and poor performance because contracts are optimized for legal protection rather than delivery outcomes. Too many standards were set for different commercial environments and persist because they’ve become embedded in policy rather than because they serve current needs. Commercial integration requires procurement to become change advocates, questioning whether inherited commercial models actually enable performance or simply shift risk in ways that make delivery harder and more expensive.
Engaging differently: Rather than consulting stakeholders on procurement-defined strategies, commercially integrated teams participate in defining what success looks like, what commitments the organization should make, and how commercial arrangements can enable rather than merely document those commitments.
The evolution, not revolution
Organizations don’t need to abandon category management, they need to evolve it. Some have already integrated strategic thinking and lifecycle accountability into sophisticated category approaches. Others remain locked in a framework designed for a simpler era.
The path forward is not to dismantle discipline but to elevate it with judgement, not to replace method but to complement it with context, not to eliminate structure but to ensure it serves purpose rather than constraining it.
Category management brought business discipline to how procurement operates. Commercial integration demands that procurement understands why, for whom, and to what end. That shift – from operational excellence to strategic contribution – requires procurement professionals to develop new capabilities such that management becomes willing to grant them new authority.
Globalisation did not just stretch supply chains across borders, it quietly reshaped how organisations thought about contracts, risk, and value. What began as a search for efficiency and scale evolved into procurement models dominated by cost-based analysis, standardisation, and leverage. Contracts became instruments of control rather than frameworks for collaboration. The result was not only opaque supply ecosystems, but a steady erosion of trust that now constrains our ability to adapt.
As supply networks expanded globally, visibility diminished. Distance (geographic, cultural, and organisational) made relationships harder to sustain, so procurement turned to what could be measured: price, unit cost, and compliance. Risk was increasingly perceived as something to be mitigated rather than managed, and the illusion that this could be achieved through onerous contract terms took hold. Liability caps, indemnities, termination rights, and unilateral change clauses multiplied, often imposed through non-negotiable templates. The contract was no longer designed as a shared commitment but instead became a defensive shield.
This shift had profound consequences. Cost-based procurement models encouraged fragmentation: multiple tiers of suppliers, subcontractors, and intermediaries operating with limited transparency and weak alignment to end outcomes. Contracts reinforced this fragmentation by prioritising protection over performance and enforcement over learning. In many cases, the commercial logic assumed that power and scale could substitute for trust. When something went wrong, the answer was more control, tighter terms, and greater risk transfer.
Over time, this approach hollowed out relationships. Suppliers learned to protect themselves just as aggressively as buyers sought to protect their organisations. Information was withheld, problems were surfaced late, and innovation slowed. Value was undermined not because parties lacked technical capability, but because the commercial environment discouraged openness and shared problem-solving. Rather than enabling coordination across complex ecosystems, contracts became barriers to adaptation.
The legacy of this period hangs over us today. Even as organisations acknowledge the limits of cost-led procurement and the fragility of global supply chains, the underlying contract models remain largely unchanged. Templates still reflect assumptions of mistrust. Risk is still treated as something that can be transferred rather than jointly managed. Governance mechanisms still prioritise escalation and enforcement over dialogue and adjustment. Taken together, we have created rigidity in a world that demands adaptability. Contracts are simply unfit for purpose.
Moving away from this is difficult precisely because trust has been so deeply damaged. Relationships cannot be reset simply by declaring new intentions or adding collaborative language to old structures. Contracts encode history. They reflect past behaviours, power dynamics, and expectations. As long as commercial models continue to assume adversarial interests, they will reproduce the same outcomes—regardless of how volatile, interconnected, or uncertain the operating environment becomes.
If globalisation taught organisations how to optimise for cost, the next phase demands that they relearn how to design for resilience, value, and adaptability. That shift cannot occur without confronting the role contracts have played in shaping behaviour. Until contracts evolve from tools of control into instruments of shared understanding and managed risk, procurement will remain trapped by the very models it now recognises as unsustainable.
Supply talent is no longer about procurement skills, functional process expertise, or traditional supply chain operations. In a market-driven, AI-enabled world, organisations need people who understand how value is created across the entire commercial ecosystem, from customer promise through market demand, pricing, product design, supplier capacity, and multi-tier commitments.
It is not only AI which is driving this shift, but the movement from analog, fragmented data to digitally generated, continuously flowing data. That shift is dissolving the old view of supply chains as sequential pipelines with poor visibility and replacing it with data-integrated ecosystems where customer, supplier, operational, and financial signals circulate in near-real time.
This demands a different kind of talent – people who can think, decide, and act across boundaries, using AI and data to shape commitments, not just manage processes. It also changes the way that relationships are formed and managed, resulting in a different approach to contracting.
So as we head rapidly into 2026, these changes will be a big focus for our research and publications. The shift itself will require planning and preparation – it’s time to get started.
CFOs are placing pricing high on the strategic agenda. With trade tensions, shifting supply chains, and cost volatility, organisations are revisiting how they set and adjust prices. But the most important message from the recent Deloitte CFO Signals survey is not simply that pricing matters more, it is that contracts have not kept up.
Pricing is volatile. Most contracts are not set up to handle that volatility and the gap has become costly.
For suppliers, the pressure shows up in margin erosion when input costs rise and contracts offer no relief. For buyers, it comes as unexpected price-increase requests, (or calls for an unplanned price reduction), strained relationships, and difficulty forecasting budgets. When pricing becomes uncertain, rigid contracts become points of friction rather than frameworks for value.
The solution is not to push harder on one side or the other. It is to redesign how pricing is handled in contracts and governed in relationships. So what needs to change?
1. Pricing mechanisms need to be more intelligent.
Fixed prices without adjustment rights no longer reflect market reality. Contracts should incorporate triggers for inflation, commodity shifts, tariff changes, and supply-chain disruptions, based on clear and verifiable rules on how adjustments are calculated. And that means:
2. Both sides need better transparency.
Without visibility into cost drivers or supply pressures, pricing conversations become positional rather than problem-solving. Data-sharing obligations and audit rights can enable more constructive negotiations. And that means:
3. Governance must be more frequent and more commercial.
Annual reviews are too slow. Organisations need structured quarterly pricing reviews, joint risk discussions, and rapid escalation routes when market conditions shift, with some changes potentially automated. And that means:
4. Risk allocation must be revisited.
Inflation, tariffs, regulatory shifts, substitute sourcing are now everyday commercial risks. Contracts should allocate them deliberately rather than remain silent or assume one party can absorb everything. And that means:
5. Contracting teams must step forward.
Pricing is strategic, and contracting is the mechanism through which strategy is executed. Contract professionals need stronger commercial fluency, the ability to model scenarios, and the confidence to negotiate adaptive terms.
The message for both buyers and suppliers is the same: the world has become more uncertain, but most contracts have not adequately adjusted. Those who modernise pricing clauses, strengthen governance, and build more transparent relationships will be better positioned to navigate volatility and to turn uncertainty into opportunity.
A recent interview by McKinsey with Wikipedia’s founder offers valuable insights to a question challenging many commercial teams and business negotiators: how do we build trust in an age where technology increasingly mediates our relationships?
Jimmy Wales observed that trust is declining almost everywhere, whether in politics, journalism, or institutions. This erosion of confidence makes it harder to agree on even the simplest facts – yet the Wikipedia model continues to function. It’s grounded in two simple principles: assume good faith and make integrity easy to verify. These principles have deep relevance for today’s commercial and contracting professionals.
Deliberate Vulnerability
Wales once wrote on his user page, “Yes, you can edit this page. I trust you.”
That willingness to extend trust as a core principle became part of Wikipedia’s culture. The community allows anyone to edit, but with the safety net of instant reversion and transparent oversight.
Commercial teams could learn from that mindset. Too often, contracts are written as if every counterpart is an adversary waiting to exploit a loophole. We legislate against bad faith instead of designing for good faith. Yet successful partnerships typically begin with an act of measured vulnerability -sharing data, explaining assumptions, or exposing real cost structures. When it is paired with sensible guardrails, acts of trust invite reciprocity.
Trust by Design
Wikipedia assumes good faith, but not blindly. As Wales puts it, “Assume good faith is not a suicide pact.” Trust is supported by a well-structured system: transparent edits, public records, clear rules, and the ability to revert or block bad actors.
In business relationships, trust must likewise be designed, not declared. Governance frameworks, data accuracy, and digital records serve the same purpose as Wikipedia’s edit history. They allow for correction without accusation. In the era of AI and digital contracting, this means traceable data flows, version control, and transparent performance dashboards. Technology becomes the architecture that sustains integrity.
Reputation as the New Currency
Wikipedia relies on “pseudo-anonymity” – consistent identity and behavior over time. Reputation counts – and builds over time.
That lesson translates directly into contracting. Buyers and suppliers alike build credibility through consistency of conduct: fairness in negotiation, honesty in communication, reliability in delivery. As digital ecosystems expand, formal and informal reputation systems will increasingly determine who is trusted, who gets opportunities, and who is left out.
Shared Understanding of the Facts
Wales warns that democracy fails when people no longer share a common reality. The same is true of commerce. Negotiations and contract management collapse when each party operates on different data or conflicting interpretations of performance.
AI and analytics can help, but only if they reinforce a shared factual baseline. Joint dashboards, open data repositories, and agreed definitions of success turn technology into a trust amplifier. Without that alignment, technology simply speeds up misunderstanding.
The Simplicity of Integrity
“Tell the truth. Give the facts. Don’t be biased.” Wales calls it the “kindergarten test.” These values have never been more relevant. As algorithms begin to draft contracts, monitor delivery, and even recommend negotiation tactics, we must embed these ethical principles into the systems we build and use. Transparency, explainability, and fairness should be the cornerstones of any AI-enabled contracting environment.
Scaling Trust
Wikipedia’s community thrives because it combines individual integrity with systemic accountability. That’s precisely what modern commercial ecosystems require. Trust grows through one relationship at a time, but it scales only when systems reinforce the same values.
Adaptive contracts, shared data, and relational governance are the business equivalents of Wikipedia’s edit logs and community norms. They make trust not an act of faith but a design feature.
Technology Cannot Replace Trust: It Can Encode It
Wikipedia’s success is not about technology; it’s about the values the technology supports.
The same choice confronts commercial and contracting professionals. As AI enters the negotiation room and digital platforms manage our obligations, we face a defining question: Will we use technology to control people or interactions, or to empower trust between them?
Trust remains the invisible capital of commerce. It is what turns data into decisions, contracts into relationships, and promises into performance. The tools may be new, but the lessons remain the same.
Tell the truth. Give the facts. Don’t be biased.
Eighty-seven percent of organizations report that they are operating in conditions of heightened uncertainty. Market volatility, geopolitical tension, regulatory shifts and digital disruption now define the global business environment. Yet, as the Commerce & Contract Management Institute’s new global benchmark reveals, most organizations remain ill-equipped to adapt to these challenging conditions.
Across industries and geographies, perceptions of uncertainty vary – manufacturers worry about supply chain fragility, financial institutions about regulatory complexity, and technology firms about talent and IP risk. But the pattern is universal: today’s uncertainty is persistent, systemic, and accelerating.
If volatility is the new normal, adaptability must become the new core competency. And that is where most organizations are falling short. Contracts and contract management represent critical tools in handling uncertainty, yet our data shows that around 70–80% still lack clear ownership of the contracting process. Roles are fragmented, accountability for outcomes is blurred, and contract design and performance remain trapped between functions rather than managed as an integrated business discipline.
This fragmentation erodes contract intelligence. Instead of learning from experience, organizations tighten controls, multiply approval gates, and become more risk-averse – exactly the opposite of what resilience requires.
When we looked at “quality of contracting,” the contrast was striking. Those with clear governance, shared data visibility, and adaptive terms achieve faster cycle times, more consistent value-based metrics, and greater success in meeting strategic goals. They react to uncertainty with curiosity and creativity, not fear. They treat contracts not as preventative shields, but as instruments of alignment and opportunity. A key element of the solution became available in June of this year – the ANSI-approved Contract Management Standard – a globally developed framework which assists organizations in identifying and fixing the process defects and misalignments that underlie many of the performance issues.
That shift in mindset and discipline is critical. A risk-focused organization views contracts as protection from loss. An opportunity-focused organization does not lose sight of risk, but also sees them as tools to enable change – to enter new markets, forge stronger relationships, and share data in pursuit of common outcomes.
Achieving that quality depends on three interdependent elements: people, process, and systems. The skills profile is evolving fast. Traditional legal, financial and negotiation expertise remain essential, but they must now be combined with data literacy, digital fluency, and the ability to interpret insights generated by AI and analytics.
The performance gap is widening between the best and the rest. Leading organizations are redesigning performance metrics to measure value creation and adaptability. Their progress is powered by intelligent systems that transform contract data into foresight and foresight into faster, better decisions.
System adoption and aspiration point to the same conclusion: the future of contracting lies in human–machine collaboration. AI is already reshaping the landscape – from automated clause analysis to predictive risk alerts and scenario planning. But AI alone is not the answer. It is the combination of capable people, connected processes, and intelligent systems that will determine success.
The message of this benchmark is clear. Elevating commercial and contract management is not a back-office improvement, it is the catalyst for organizational resilience. Those who invest in capability now will be the ones turning uncertainty into advantage.
Join us on Monday 3rd November for the official release of the report and a webinar where we discuss the findings.
As a child, every summer, my garden was full of butterflies. Today, sighting one is so rare that it’s a special event. Is this indicative of the future for commercial and contract managers?
There’s no question that just as environmental changes have altered butterfly populations, the digital revolution is fundamentally reshaping the CCM landscape. But unlike the butterflies in my garden, the CCM practitioner isn’t facing extinction – they’re undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis.
The Traditional CCM Garden
In the traditional CCM world, practitioners fluttered across every phase of the contracting lifecycle – from initial design through to closure. Like butterflies pollinating flowers, CCM professionals moved between departments, facilitating relationships, negotiating terms, and ensuring compliance through manual processes and personal expertise. The garden was full of activity, with practitioners handling routine tasks, document reviews, and relationship management across the each phase of the contracting lifecycle, often interrupted by troublesome moths which intervened to create chaos and confusion.
The Changing Environment
Today’s digital transformation represents the environmental shift that’s changing our CCM ecosystem. Artificial Intelligence, automation, and intelligent systems are reshaping how contracting work gets done. The transactional elements of contracting – the routine, repeatable tasks that once required human intervention – are increasingly being handled by digital systems that can process information faster and more consistently than their human counterparts.
The Evolution, Not Extinction
And here’s where our butterfly metaphor takes an optimistic turn. The CCM practitioner isn’t becoming extinct; they’re evolving into a more specialized, strategic species. Just as some butterfly species have adapted to urban environments by changing their behavior and habitat preferences, CCM professionals are adapting by focusing on higher-value activities that require uniquely human capabilities.
The future CCM practitioner – our evolved butterfly – will be characterized by:
Strategic Navigation: Moving beyond transactional processing to focus on strategy development and commercial model design. These practitioners will define the frameworks within which automated systems operate, ensuring that technology serves broader business objectives.
Relationship Orchestration: While systems can process data and execute routine tasks, the complex art of relationship management, stakeholder alignment, and collaborative problem-solving remains distinctly human. The future CCM butterfly will specialize in these high-touch, high-value interactions.
Analytics and Insight Generation: The data generated through automated contracting processes creates new opportunities for strategic insight. Future practitioners will focus on interpreting this data to drive continuous improvement and strategic decision-making, feeding back into the strategy component of the contracting lifecycle.
Exception Management: When automated systems encounter situations outside their parameters, human expertise becomes crucial. The evolved CCM practitioner will specialize in handling complex, non-standard situations that require judgment, creativity, and strategic thinking.
The New Ecosystem
Rather than a garden with fewer butterflies, we’re seeing the emergence of a more sophisticated ecosystem. The routine work that once occupied much of a practitioner’s time is being handled by intelligent systems, freeing them to focus on work that creates greater value. This mirrors how some butterfly species have found new niches in urban environments – different from their traditional habitats, but vital to the ecosystem’s health.
The contracting lifecycle itself becomes more dynamic, with strategy and analytics playing increasingly important roles in driving continuous improvement and adaptation. The future CCM practitioner operates at this strategic level, ensuring that automated systems align with business objectives and that insights from data analytics inform strategic decisions.
A Garden Transformed, Not Diminished
My childhood garden may have fewer butterflies today, but the CCM profession is experiencing something different – a transformation that elevates the role rather than diminishing it. The future CCM butterfly may look different from its predecessors, but it will be more specialized, more strategic, and more valuable to the business ecosystem it serves.
The key to thriving in this new environment is embracing the metamorphosis – developing the strategic, analytical, and relationship management capabilities that complement rather than compete with intelligent systems. The CCM practitioners who make this transition successfully will find themselves in a garden that’s not emptier, but richer with opportunity. And that is why NCMA, WorldCC and the CCM Institute have come together, providing the global standards, research and training that turn that metamorphosis from a possibility to a reality.
When ERP systems became the backbone of many organizations in the 1990s – 2000s, one of the frequent criticisms (and I was among those critics) was the extent to which it caused the embedding of rigid, siloed standards which added to the push for commoditization and drove tensions in the customer – supplier relationship.
In the eyes of those objecting, ERP standardizes and hard-wires business processes (including procurement and contracts) to the point where it constrains flexibility, makes it harder to accommodate exceptions, and limits the ability to adapt to diverse or changing market conditions.
So: were those concerns valid? Are they still correct today?
Then: The Nature of the Concern
ERPs were designed to impose discipline and standardization, which was a huge benefit for compliance, data integrity, and efficiency. But for contracts, which are inherently situational, market-responsive, and nuanced, ERP often presented a barrier. Templates and workflows embedded in ERP systems often reflected the policy at the time of implementation, and became very hard to change.
Negotiators and commercial managers complained of too-rigid clause libraries, overly standardized approval paths that didn’t recognize different risk–reward trade-offs and lack of ability to reflect business realities between different products or services, industry partners, market segments or geographic regions.
Now: Facing Market Volatility, Are Those Issues Evident?
The answer is yes – more so than ever.
Markets today are far more volatile, diverse, and uncertain than when most ERP systems were architected. Organizations are being asked to:
- Enter into new types of agreements (e.g., outcome-based, ESG-driven, multi-party ecosystems).
- Adjust terms more dynamically to reflect supply disruptions, inflation, new regulations, or competitive pressures.
- Recognize local market variations (cultural, legal, and commercial).
But the rigidity of many legacy ERP systems makes it slow and costly to adapt contracting practices. In fact, this rigidity has caused serious problems in building and managing trading relationships. Key examples of this are:
- Manual workarounds — people operating “off system” to enable exceptions.
- Data fragmentation, because contracts negotiated outside the ERP aren’t integrated back cleanly.
- Value erosion, because organizations can’t easily adjust to market signals or customer/supplier needs.
Is this changing?
ERP vendors have started responding. Many now offer more modular, API-friendly architectures that allow best-of-breed CLM or CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) tools to integrate. Cloud-based ERP is more configurable than older on-premise versions, though still more rigid than a true CLM platform.
High-performing organizations now deliberately keep their contract intelligence and flexibility in a CLM or adjacent platform, while letting ERP handle transactions, compliance, and reporting. There is growing adoption of governance models which accept some decentralization to allow local or deal-specific adaptations. And the experience with ERP has taught us that adaptability and resilience must be designed into both processes and technology, not treated as afterthoughts.
So the challenge now is not to throw out ERP, but to augment it with more flexible, intelligent tools and governance frameworks that reflect the reality of modern contracting.
Commitment Matters 