Background and context

Procurement now sits at the intersection of commercial pressure, regulatory expectation and cybersecurity exposure. Contracts with technology vendors, outsourcers and data processors create both business value and structural risk. Research from World Commerce & Contracting shows companies can lose up to 15 percent of annual business value through inefficient contract management and weak governance of obligations. At the same time, boards increasingly view third party risk as enterprise risk, not a separate topic, as highlighted in ISACA’s white paper on managing third party risk.

In many organisations, contract lifecycle management (CLM) and vendor security review are still separate disciplines with different platforms, owners and metrics. That separation introduces delay and blind spots. A procurement playbook that treats CLM and security review as parallel tracks, rather than sequential stages, reduces cycle time while strengthening control.

Why CLM and security review often diverge

CLM programs focus on drafting, negotiation, approval, execution and renewal. Gartner defines the CLM market as technology that manages contracts from initiation through negotiation, execution, compliance and renewal, with increasing emphasis on automation and analytics, in its overview on contract life cycle management. Vendor risk teams, in contrast, focus on identifying, assessing and mitigating risk in the third party ecosystem. IBM’s guide on third party risk management describes TPRM as a continuous lifecycle of identifying vendors, assessing controls and monitoring performance.

When these tracks are managed independently, several issues appear:

• Contract negotiation begins before any structured security assessment, so material findings arrive after commercial terms are locked.
• Security reviews run on email and spreadsheets, without links back to the contract record or renewal calendar.
• Renewals proceed automatically in CLM while vendor risk data sits in a separate tool with no integration.

WorldCC’s updated research with Deloitte on contract value erosion notes that fragmented ownership and inconsistent processes create measurable financial loss, and recommends integrated governance across legal, procurement and risk functions in its analysis on contract management lifecycle ROI.

Designing a parallel track procurement playbook

A workable playbook needs to describe how CLM and security review run in parallel from intake through renewal. The design can be framed in five layers.

1. Risk tiering that drives both workflows
   The starting point is vendor classification. ISACA’s guidance on vendor risk assessments and UpGuard’s third party risk management guide both emphasise that impact varies widely across the vendor portfolio. A simple tiering model, driven by data sensitivity, system criticality and regulatory exposure, should drive:

• The depth of security due diligence required.
• The level of legal review and senior approval.
• The escalation path when standard terms cannot be met.

High tier vendors trigger early, full-scope security review and more stringent contract positions. Lower tier vendors follow a lighter pattern while remaining inside CLM and risk oversight.

2. Integrated intake across procurement, legal and security
   Intake must capture enough structured data to route work correctly. That includes vendor type, services, data categories, systems touched and contract type. Internal modeling across eight contract categories shows that NDAs close in a median of a few days while MSAs and software licences take several weeks, which supports segmenting cycle time metrics by contract type instead of reporting a single average.

Those same attributes determine both the security tier and the legal workflow. Intake should create a record in CLM, trigger the appropriate security tasks, and surface a shared summary to stakeholders. This keeps both tracks aligned from day one.

3. Clause library aligned with security controls
   Contract playbooks need standard positions, fallbacks and redlines that reflect security requirements. The Standardised Information Gathering (SIG) framework, described in detail by Mitratech in its overview of the SIG questionnaire, structures vendor questions across 21 risk domains. The answers should map directly to contract clauses on topics such as:

• Data location, encryption and access control.
• Subprocessor controls and flow-down obligations.
• Breach notification timelines and cooperation duties.
• Audit rights, reporting cadences and certification maintenance.

If a vendor scores poorly in any area, the playbook should specify stronger contractual mitigations or escalation thresholds. That link between questionnaire and clause library is what turns security review into enforceable obligations rather than commentary.

4. Workflow configuration in CLM and risk tools
   Parallel review works only if systems support it. Gartner’s topic page on third party risk management notes that coordinated governance models and shared information flows across legal, procurement, IT and compliance are now characteristic of mature programs. Practical implications include:

• CLM workflows that route high tier vendor contracts through security review before final approval.
• Triggers that prevent signature until both legal and security tasks reach an approved state.
• Links between the contract record and the vendor’s risk profile, so each side can see the other’s status.

CLM platforms such as Concord’s contract management security capabilities combine access controls, encryption, audit trails and permissions with workflow automation, and are well suited to supporting this pattern in a single system that legal, procurement and security teams can share.

5. Post-signature monitoring and renewal governance
   The playbook must extend beyond signing. UpGuard’s guide on third party risk management stresses continuous monitoring rather than one-off assessments. For procurement, that means:

• Linking contract renewal dates in CLM to security review cadences, so high tier vendors receive updated due diligence before auto-renewal.
• Tracking obligations such as delivery of SOC reports, penetration tests or remediation plans as contract milestones, not just security tasks.
• Recording any security incidents and mapping them to contractual rights and duties, including audit and termination provisions.

This closes the loop between operational security posture and the legal framework that governs the relationship.

Implementation patterns with CLM platforms
The structural design above can be implemented across most modern CLM tools and vendor risk platforms in a series of practical steps.

First, capture the current baseline. ContractPodAi’s overview of contract management statistics and trends highlights that organisations still lose roughly 8.6 percent of contract value to poor management, even as CLM adoption rises. That aligns with WorldCC findings on value erosion and supports a diagnostic effort: where are contracts delayed, where is security review skipped, and where does renewal happen without updated data.

Second, align playbooks and questionnaires. The SIG standard from Shared Assessments provides a common language between outsourcers and vendors. Legal and security teams can map each SIG domain to relevant clauses in standard templates, clarifying which security findings must always drive contract revisions or executive sign-off.

Third, make targeted use of AI within CLM. Recent coverage of Concord’s AI Copilot describes how natural-language queries over contract text can surface obligations and risk points for non-lawyers. Applied in a procurement context, that type of capability can help security teams quickly locate data protection, audit and incident clauses across a vendor portfolio, and help procurement identify contracts that lack required provisions.

Fourth, define metrics that span both tracks. Examples include:

• Median cycle time from intake to signature by contract type and risk tier.
• Percentage of high tier vendors with current security reviews at time of renewal.
• Percentage of active contracts that include required security clauses for a given data category.
• Number of vendor-related incidents where contractual rights could not be exercised as expected.

These measures tie back to the value erosion statistics, giving leadership a way to evaluate whether integrated governance is working.

Common pitfalls and risk considerations

Several failure modes appear repeatedly in parallel track designs.

One pitfall is over-engineering. IBM’s discussion of third party risk management best practices cautions that programmes can become bureaucratic and slow when every vendor receives the same treatment. Overly complex workflows in CLM or risk tools may push business owners to seek exceptions or off-system deals. A risk tiered approach, with clearer thresholds, helps prevent that outcome.

Another pitfall is unclear ownership. Gartner’s guidance on third party risk management governance notes that legal, IT, procurement and compliance functions often debate who owns vendor risk. A playbook should name accountable owners for each step, including who can approve deviations from the contract playbook or security standard.

A third risk is dataset opacity. Despite the amount of analyst commentary, there is no widely available public dataset that tracks how running CLM and security review in parallel affects cycle time or incident frequency by sector. Most organisations will need to build internal views using CLM timestamps, risk tool records and incident logs. That work is non-trivial but is the only way to quantify value for a specific portfolio.

Finally, playbooks go stale when threat models and regulations move faster than documentation. ISACA’s journal articles on practical third party risk management stress periodic review of control frameworks as cyber and regulatory landscapes change. The same principle applies to procurement playbooks. Governance should include scheduled refresh cycles and a clear process for updating templates and workflows when major adjustments are needed.

Sources

World Commerce & Contracting value erosion study (via FT Markets announcement)
ISACA white paper on managing third party risk
Deloitte insight on contract management lifecycle ROI
IBM overview of third party risk management
Gartner topic page on third party risk management (subscription required for full assets)
Mitratech explanation of the Shared Assessments SIG questionnaire
Shared Assessments paper on the SIG questionnaire for outsourcers and vendors
UpGuard guide to third party risk management
ContractPodAi summary of contract management statistics and trends
Concord contract management security overview
Advos coverage of Concord AI Copilot