Strategic Agreement Management: A New Business Priority

In the evolving landscape of business agreements, high-performing leaders distinguish themselves not by following a checklist of tasks, but by embracing strategic priorities and mindsets that elevate agreement management to a core driver of organizational value, resilience, and competitive advantage. The latest research from Deloitte and Docusign reveals that, particularly in Latin America, agreement management has moved from being a back-office function to a boardroom priority. 

But why? They see agreements as living assets that, when managed well, can unlock new opportunities and mitigate risks across the business. That’s why. Nowadays, over 75% of organizations assign senior leaders for making agreement management more effective, reflecting its importance in navigating complex regulatory environments and fast-paced market dynamics. For them, agreement management is essential not only for operational efficiency but also for achieving strategic, financial, and customer-centric goals.

What truly differentiates high-performing leaders is their holistic view of their business, and that remains true regarding the agreement lifecycle. They look beyond the committing moment, focusing on every step, from starting a deal, negotiating, driving insights, and making sure there’s continuing opportunities. This comprehensive perspective empowers a mindset that seeks them to extract insights, manage risks, and optimize performance at every stage. Nearly half of Latin American leaders currently focus on contract creation, but the most advanced organizations are expanding their maturity into review, risk evaluation, storage and analytics. This shift is crucial for capturing untapped value and responding to the region’s unique business informality and flexibility.

Another winning feature is that they are early adopters of automation and AI, not as mere trends, but as enablers of smarter, faster, and more reliable agreement processes. Over 70% of leaders report advanced automation or AI in customer experience. AI is being considered very relevant for optimizing and extracting actionable business insights from agreements. These leaders are positioning their organizations to leapfrog traditional bottlenecks by leveraging AI for risk assessment, compliance, and proactive opportunity identification.

High-performing leaders also invest in cross-functional integration. Agreement management should not be siloed within legal or procurement. Instead, it can be embedded across sales, HR, IT, customer experience, and more. It supports diverse business objectives, from accelerating sales cycles to improving compliance and employee engagement. Given that Latin America has a very deal-oriented mentality and flexible workflows, leaders in the region excel at fostering collaboration. This enables them to respond quickly to market changes and regulatory shifts, while maintaining consistency and control.

Reliance on data and analytics is not negotiable. That’s why when it comes to their agreements, the ability to generate insights that inform strategic decisions, manage obligations, and mitigate risks is considered important. In Latin America, where regulatory environments can be fluid and business practices diverse, leaders who harness data-driven insights are better equipped to anticipate challenges, seize opportunities, and ensure compliance.

Trust in technology is another hallmark in the region. More than 80% of leaders in Mexico and over 90% in Brazil express confidence in their agreement management workflows’ ability to highlight local regulatory requirements and maintain security. This trust is foundational for embracing new technologies and scaling agreement management across borders. It allows Latin American leaders to confidently adopt AI and automation, knowing that their systems can adapt to local legal frameworks and business norms. This adaptability is crucial in a region where legal frameworks are still maturing and solutions often need to be purpose-built.

Finally and most important, high-performing leaders are not just reacting to current trends, they are shaping the future. They see actionable insights and AI as a transformative force, with 52% of Latin American leaders considering AI essential for contract optimization and a significant portion prioritizing AI-driven business insights. Their vision extends to automating review, risk evaluation, and customer experience, anticipating that the majority of agreement workflows will be AI-assisted within the next three years. This forward-looking mindset positions organizations in the region to leap ahead as AI capabilities mature, provided they invest in data quality, metadata, and change management today.

For high-performing leaders in Latin America, agreement management is not just about efficiency or compliance, it is a strategic capability that underpins growth, resilience, and differentiation. Their approach is characterized by executive-level ownership and alignment with business strategy, holistic investment across the agreement lifecycle, early adoption of automation and AI for smarter, faster decisions, cross-functional integration and collaboration, data-driven insights for proactive risk and opportunity management, deep trust in technology and adaptation to local realities, and a visionary outlook on AI-driven transformation. By embodying these priorities, high-performing leaders in Latin America are not only recapturing value lost to inefficient agreement processes, they are setting new standards for what is possible in a dynamic, digital-first business environment. Their example offers a roadmap for others in the region to follow, as agreement management becomes an ever more critical lever for sustainable success.