If your contract process currently looks like this:
37‑email threads titled “RE: RE: FW: Supplier Contract - URGENT”
PDFs printed, signed, scanned and lost
Contracts “somewhere” on SharePoint, and also on someone’s desk
Junior buyers writing novels to the board because “better to over‑explain than miss something”
…you’re in good company. In dozens of procurement conversations, people describe their contract lifecycle and approvals as chaotic and slow. It’s painful for buyers, frustrating for stakeholders and risky for the business.
At the same time, everyone has a pretty clear mental picture of what “good” should look like:
A digital procurement policy, authority levels built into the workflow, approvals that flow through a system instead of email chains, contracts in one place, and a clean view of upcoming renewals.
This post is about closing the gap between those two worlds - and how Kodiak Hub helps you get there.
Let’s put some detail behind the pain.
Because the process is unclear, junior and mid level staff over‑compensate:
They write long explanatory emails to senior stakeholders and sometimes the board
Attach multiple versions of the contract
Copy half the company “just in case”
Approvals become slow, high friction and high anxiety. No one is sure who actually needs to sign off, so everyone gets asked - and no one really owns the decision.
You might already have:
A procurement policy
A Delegation of Authority (DoA) matrix
Rules for which spend, category or risk level needs which approvals
But these live in PDFs and internal wiki pages - not in the actual process. So buyers:
Manually guess who to involve
Hope they are following the right thresholds
Have no systemic way to prove that the right people approved the right thing
This is a governance and audit problem waiting to happen.
Real quotes from buyers:
“Contracts are all over the place.”
“We could use a contract amnesty.”
“Some are on desks and down the side of a filing cabinet.”
In practice that means:
Shared drives with nested folders and no naming convention
Contracts sitting in email threads
Signed originals living in drawers in different offices
Many contracts that nobody is even sure are still active
If you do not know what you have agreed, you can’t manage risk, performance, or renewals.
Because contract metadata is not centralised, you can’t easily see:
Which contracts expire in the next 3, 6, 12 months
Which suppliers are on auto‑renew
Who owns each contract internally
What SLAs, penalties or indexation mechanisms are in place
So renewals either:
Happen by default without a proper review or retender
Or turn into last minute fire drills where nobody has time to do a good job
When things are slow, stakeholders experience it as “procurement bureaucracy”. But internally you know:
The approvals process is based on fear, not design
The tools (email, Word, shared drives) are not fit for purpose
You are carrying the risk without having proper systems
That’s exactly why this pain point comes up so often in discovery calls.
The upside is that most teams already have a clear vision. It usually includes:
Every contract is:
Stored in one platform
Tagged with supplier, category, business owner, region, spend, risk tier and key dates
Searchable and filterable by multiple attributes
You no longer need “contract amnesty days” to figure out what exists.
For each contract you have:
Start and end dates
Renewal type (fixed term, auto‑renew, evergreen)
Notice periods
Commercial data (price model, caps, indexation, rebates)
SLAs and KPIs
Internal owner and escalation contacts
This metadata is what drives proactive renewals and performance reviews.
Approvals are driven by rules, not social dynamics:
Spend thresholds and risk levels map directly to who must approve
Approvers are automatically assigned based on policy
They see the key facts and risks, not a 3‑page email essay
The system tracks who approved what, when
No more “War and Peace” threads. Just clear tasks that can be approved, commented or rejected.
Contracts are not a separate island. They tie into:
Supplier performance scorecards and QBRs
Risk assessments and ESG findings
Corrective action (CAPA) outcomes
So when you approach a renewal or retender, you can answer:
“How did this supplier actually perform against what we agreed, and what does that mean for our decision?”
Kodiak Hub is built around the supplier - and contracts are a core part of that 360 view. Here is how it maps to the pain points above.
In Kodiak Hub, each supplier has a complete profile that includes:
Contracts and key commercial terms
Linked categories, regions and business units
Performance metrics (OTIF, quality, cost variance, audit scores)
Risk and compliance data (certificates, ESG info, incidents)
You do not manage contracts in isolation. You see them in the context of how the supplier is actually behaving.
Instead of approvals living in a PDF, you can:
Configure workflows based on spend, category, risk tier and region
Map different approval paths for different contract types
Assign approvers automatically from your authority matrix
Capture comments and decisions inside the platform
Junior buyers no longer need to invent long emails. The system tells them who needs to approve and what information those people need.
Kodiak Hub gives you:
A central repository for all supplier contracts
Custom fields for spend, owner, SLAs, notice periods, renewal type, risk flags and more
Powerful search and filters so you can slice by category, region, owner, spend band or renewal window
That “contract amnesty” moment becomes a one‑time migration, not a recurring event.
You can:
See all contracts expiring in the next X months on a dashboard
Get alerts for upcoming renewals and notice periods
Link each contract to a structured review workflow (performance, risk, commercial)
Decide to renew, renegotiate, retender or exit - and track that decision
Renewals stop being a surprise and become a planned activity with enough lead time.
Because Kodiak Hub also manages supplier performance and risk, you can:
Pull contract data into QBRs - “this is what we agreed, this is how you did”
Use performance and risk outcomes to inform whether you renew or reallocate spend
Tie CAPAs and improvement plans to specific contractual obligations
Now contracts are not static documents - they are living agreements that reflect reality.
You do not need to fix everything in one go. A pragmatic path could look like this:
Inventory your most critical contracts. Focus on top suppliers and highest risk or spend categories.
Define the minimal metadata you need. Supplier, category, business owner, start/end, renewal type, notice, spend, SLAs.
Set up Kodiak Hub as your central repository for this first wave and migrate contracts + metadata.
Configure simple approval flows based on current policy and authority levels.
Create a “renewal calendar” view to get ahead of upcoming expiries.
Pilot performance linked reviews for a handful of suppliers where a renewal is coming up soon.
Once people experience the difference between “war and peace” email chains and clear click‑to‑approve workflows, adoption will not be your problem.
If you recognise the picture of chaotic contract lifecycle and approvals - long emails, scattered PDFs, last minute renewals - you are not alone. The good news is that the vision you already have of “what good looks like” is very achievable with the right platform.
Kodiak Hub gives you the building blocks: one contract repository tied to supplier performance and risk, digitalised approval flows that follow your policy, and renewal radar that lets you plan reviews instead of reacting at the last minute.