Unlocking Supplier Value With Contract Management

Post-signature contract management is where real value emerges in supply chain operations, yet many organisations overlook this critical phase entirely.

For many teams, the signing of the contract marks the completion of a procurement cycle – but for Dominique Kindt, CEO and Founder, and Koen Vercauteren, Head of Product Management of WITH and its digital platform Birdseye, it is precisely where the real challenge of supply chain value realisation begins.

WITH was founded in Belgium in 2014 by a team with over 50 years of combined experience in strategic sourcing, vendor management and contract management consulting.

By 2018, however, a pattern had emerged that would transform their understanding of supply chain operations.

"The key word is frustration," says Dominique.

"As consultants, we were typically involved in larger deal-making types of consulting. We were invited then four or five years later to renegotiate."

The scenario repeated itself: clients who had invested heavily in procurement were returning dissatisfied with supplier performance. But when the WITH team examined the underlying agreements, they discovered the real problem was not supplier capability – it was poor vendor management.

"You look into the contract and you say, well have you done this? No we have not," Dominique explains.

"So you see that contracts were not consumed, not executed, the value was not consumed."

This realisation exposed a critical gap in supply chain operations. Procurement teams were securing favourable terms and competitive pricing, yet the supply chain was not capturing the negotiated value.

This insight led them to develop Birdseye, a platform for post-signature contract management. The solution began as Sourcing Cockpit in 2018, evolving through an AI-enabled Contract Scanner in 2022 and formal European expansion in 2024.

The supply chain execution gap

The problem, according to Koen, is a fundamental misunderstanding about vendor relationship management after onboarding.

"Time and time again we see that somehow people expect that after the signature is done that everything goes automatically as planned," he says.

"And this ignores a basic truth: things change."

Supply chains face constant disruption – from market volatility and regulatory shifts to supplier capacity constraints and logistics challenges. The assumption that a signed agreement will automatically deliver procurement value for years without active vendor management is no longer realistic.

Effective post-signature management encompasses supplier risk monitoring, cost tracking against negotiated rates and rigorous tracking of supplier obligations. When supply chain organisations attempt to implement these processes at scale, they discover that experienced procurement professionals alone are not sufficient.

Managing diverse supplier portfolios

"That one size fits all is killing contract management because not all contracts are the same."

This mirrors established supply chain thinking around supplier categorisation – strategic vendors require different management intensity than transactional suppliers.

This could mean tracking compliance with agreed delivery schedules, monitoring quality metrics, verifying invoice accuracy or ensuring suppliers meet sustainability commitments.

For supply chain leaders managing dozens or hundreds of vendor relationships simultaneously, this transforms vendor management from reactive firefighting into proactive value capture.

As Dominique puts it: "You get a contract signed, it lives for five years, nobody looks at it, you can hardly say you are in control."

For supply chain leaders, demonstrating control means proving vendor compliance, tracking supplier performance and capturing negotiated value throughout multi-year supplier relationships.

Source: Supply Chain Digital