Lessons From Lands’ End at NRF: Smart Commitment Management With CLM
At NRF Retail’s Big Show, Raindrop joined Lands’ End to showcase a critical but often overlooked driver of retail performance: commitment management. In the session, “Smart Commitment Management with CLM: Lessons from Lands’ End,” the teams shared how modern retailers are using contract lifecycle management (CLM) and connected Source-to-Pay processes to improve visibility, reduce risk, and operate more efficiently, especially with lean procurement teams.
The Challenge: Managing Commitments in a Lean Retail Environment
Retail procurement teams today face mounting pressure, from tariffs and economic uncertainty to shrinking teams and major ERP transitions. As Duane Walz, Senior Director of Enterprise Procurement at Lands’ End, explained, managing contracts and renewals through spreadsheets, shared drives, and disconnected tools created real operational risk.
Without a clear system of record, finding the latest contract, tracking renewals, or understanding total financial exposure was time-consuming and error-prone, making it difficult to move quickly or proactively manage spend.
The Solution: Centralized Commitment Management With CLM
Lands’ End focused on building a single source of truth for all financial commitments, contracts, renewals, approvals, and requests, while still supporting the speed the business requires.
By centralizing intake, approvals, workflows, and contract storage, the team established consistent processes across Procurement, Finance, Legal, and IT. Contracts now serve as both a legal record and a collaboration hub, capturing negotiation context, risk considerations, and renewal timing in one place.
The result: fewer last-minute fire drills, stronger controls, and better decision-making without adding complexity for the business.
Scaling Procurement Impact Without Adding Headcount
Since implementing this approach, Lands’ End manages thousands of commitments annually across IT, marketing, facilities, and professional services. For a small procurement team like Lands’ End, the biggest win has been capacity.
With structured data flowing through every process, the team can measure throughput, identify bottlenecks, negotiate more effectively, and proactively manage renewals, rather than reacting when contracts are about to expire.
What’s Next: Data, Integrations, and AI
Lands’ End is focused on deeper integrations with SAP and supplier systems, along with AI-driven contract analysis. From identifying tariff-related clauses to spotting risk patterns across agreements, AI represents the next step in turning contract data into actionable insight.
As shared during the session, the future of procurement isn’t just about storing contracts; it’s about understanding commitments at scale and using data and AI to guide smarter decisions.
Momentum Beyond the Stage at NRF
The conversation resonated across the NRF show floor. Retailers stopped by the Raindrop booth to discuss similar challenges around visibility, renewals, and lean operations, reinforcing that commitment management has become a strategic priority, not just a back-office task.
