Aligning Contracting with Strategy
What should your contracting approach look like, given your strategy, objectives and risk profile?
Align – step two of the Devant Contracting Performance Framework
Every organisation needs contracts, governance and negotiation processes.
The challenge is that there is no single “best practice” approach.
The right level of control, oversight and commercial flexibility depends on the organisation’s objectives, operating environment and appetite for risk.
A defence contractor, a regulated financial institution and a software scale-up may all require very different contracting frameworks.
The purpose of the Align phase is to ensure that your contracts, processes, governance structures and negotiation frameworks support the business you are trying to build.
Align Commercial Contracting with Business Strategy
Using the findings from the Assess phase, Devant helps organisations design the structures needed to support better commercial outcomes.
This may include:
The goal is simple:
To ensure that commercial contracting supports the business rather than slowing it down.
From Reactive Contracting to Structured Commercial Decision-Making
Many organisations evolve their contracting processes over time.
Additional approvals are added. New clauses appear. Different teams adopt different approaches.
The result is often a patchwork of practices that no longer reflects the organisation’s current strategy, risk profile or growth ambitions.
The Align phase provides an opportunity to step back and deliberately design a framework that supports how the organisation wants to operate in the future.
This transforms contracting from reactive redlining into structured commercial decision-making.
Creating the Foundations for AI-Supported Contracting
For organisations exploring AI-assisted contract review, drafting or negotiation, the Align phase is particularly important.
Technology can accelerate contracting activity, but it cannot compensate for unclear decision-making, inconsistent governance or poorly defined risk parameters.
Before introducing AI into the process, organisations need clarity around:
Without these foundations, automation simply accelerates inconsistency.
Our aim is to help organisations maximise the value of AI investments by ensuring that the underlying contracting framework is clear, coherent and aligned to business objectives.
A Collaborative Approach
Devant provides the strategic design, challenge and commercial insight required to create an effective contracting framework.
Depending on internal capability and resources, clients may choose to undertake elements of the development work themselves, with guidance and review from Devant.
Devant typically provides:
Clients may contribute:
This collaborative approach reduces cost, accelerates implementation and helps build internal ownership of the resulting framework.
Better contracts are not the goal.
Better commercial outcomes are.
