BPM doubles contract review capacity without additional resources

The challenge

When it comes to procurement, BPM is in a unique position, where a three-person team manages vendor relationships for the company’s internal operations and for clients who rely on them for outsourced IT and other services. When Lilia Alfaro joined BPM as the Head of Procurement and Vendor Management, she had to build out a formal procurement function. She built and matured the full vendor management team and processes from scratch and scaled it to support a global procurement for an organization of over 1,300 colleagues.

The procurement team was providing huge value to BPM, yet their success was slowed down by manual and tedious administrative work. Vendor contracts lived in numerous folders, email, and spreadsheets, with no single source of truth. With roughly 500 agreements under management, Lilia estimates the team was spending close to half of every workday just finding documents. “If we missed a contract, we would ask for the package together, or you would manually determine what you had and what you were missing.”

Lack of centralization where people who negotiated agreements have left the firm exacerbated the problem. “Sometimes the person who knew where everything lived had already left the company,” Lillia adds.

Redlines often happened over email, making it nearly impossible to find the latest version of an agreement. BPM’s internal legal counsel was challenged to  keep up, eventually hiring outside legal resources, turning 40+ weekly hours into a recurring external bill.

Renewal deadlines were difficult to track consistently, contributing to thousands of dollars in unnecessary spend on contracts slated for termination.

The solution

BPM had been using Zip for intake before Lillia expanded into AI Contract Orchestration. When she evaluated other CLM tools, the complexity was a non-starter. “You still had to download it, save it, and reload it again. It wasn’t going to work for us,” she shared. AI Contract Orchestration was built directly into the workflow her team already used.

One of the first things Lillia built was a custom clause library, approved by BPM Legal and configured by geography and subsidiary. Now the right language surfaces automatically, and when her external attorney reviews a contract, missing or noncompliant clauses are flagged immediately. “She just puts it through and everything that’s missing is right there,” Lillia says. “She just worries about adjusting the language.” A recent deal involving 18 contract attachments was turned around in roughly three hours.

BPM is also using Zip’s AI Agents to strengthen the process: a compliance documentation agent ensures all required vendor forms are collected before a contract moves forward, and a price negotiation agent gives the team market benchmarks heading into renewals. “It gives you insight into how you measure against other companies, and how other teams are negotiating,” says Lillia. “That’s powerful to have going into a renewal.”

The result

Since implementing Zip’s AI Contract Orchestration, BPM has cut contract review effort by up to 50%, allowing legal resources to focus on higher-value work rather than routine contract analysis. “Before, our attorney spent a significant amount of time reviewing contracts,” says Lillia. “Now the process is much more streamlined and efficient.”

In addition, the team identified unused licenses and negotiated improved supplier agreements, delivering tangible savings and greater spend visibility. “It’s rare that a product can improve speed, quality, and cost, but by implementing these improvements, we’re able to complete negotiations more quickly, have more consistent contract language, and save budget that can be deployed to other products,” she adds.

Beyond legal, the entire review workflow has changed. Procurement flags issues, infosec adds comments, and legal picks up with full context, all inside a single Zip request. BPM’s CISO, CFO, and legal team are among the tool’s biggest advocates. “Anybody I ask says they love it,” Lillia says.

Renewal management has also improved. BPM’s team now reviews contracts proactively, giving Lillia the window to negotiate better terms and build in protective clauses, including early termination provisions that have already helped BPM exit one unfavorable contract ahead of schedule. “We’re able to review contracts before renewal time, not just sign whatever comes through,” she adds.

Ultimately, Zip as whole has provided a level of compliance and trust that has enabled the procurement function to focus on strategic value-add work. “When it comes to what Zip provides, it’s peace of mind,” Lillia shares. “If something went through Zip, we know it was reviewed, and all the proper steps were taken."