It’s Not a Tech Problem, It’s a Trust Problem: The Case for “Zero Silos”

Guest post by Omololu Bajulaiye at Stella Legal, an SBS company

You know the scenario: Sales has a deal ready to close and wants speed. Procurement is hammering down on costs. Legal is hitting the brakes to mitigate risk. The contract gets stuck in the middle of this three-way tug-of-war.

For years, organizations have tried to solve this friction with more software, better workflows, and faster e-signatures. But the tension remains. Why? Because the bottleneck in your contract process isn’t actually a technology problem but a trust problem.

It’s not that lawyers have personal trust issues; it’s that organizational silos make systemic trust impossible. When teams optimize for their own isolated metrics—speed, cost, or risk, they inevitably pull the organization apart.

This is where “Zero Silos” comes in. It’s a shift that reminds us that contracts can’t live in departmental containers. Sales negotiates value, legal crystallizes it, procurement protects it, finance measures it, and operations delivers it. No single function “owns” CLM; the business does.

CLM is the integration layer, not just a project

One thing we often get wrong about contract lifecycle management (CLM) is this thinking that it’s just a project. Projects end. CLM doesn’t. Projects hand over software; effective CLM builds capability.

To fix the trust gap, we have to stop thinking of CLM as a digital filing cabinet for legal. It must be treated as the commercial operating system a business-integrated product that acts as the bridge between your front office (sales/CRM) with the financial reality of the back office (finance/ERP).

When a modern CLM acts as this integration layer, data flows without friction:

• Pricing accuracy flows from sales to finance without re-keying.
• Supplier obligations land with procurement without interpretation.
• Renewals and performance data move across teams as relationships evolve.

Instead of teams guessing what’s in the SOW, CLM makes it visible. By establishing a single source of truth, you create shared visibility. And when visibility is shared, accountability is shared.

The legal control paradox

If the technology exists to connect these teams, why are bottlenecks still so common? We have to look at the mindset of the middle office. This is the legal control paradox.

Legal’s mandate is to protect and defend. But in doing so, they often feel the need to tightly control every aspect of the business interaction. However, when the focus on risk becomes overbearing, it inevitably creates bottlenecks everywhere else, slower deals, narrow autonomy, and a culture where people wait for legal to “bless” things instead of taking ownership.

Change as behavioral challenge, not an IT challenge

Most CLM implementations stall when people treat the technology as the transformation. The real shift is moving from “legal owns all risks” to “the business owns value, and legal shapes the boundaries.”

This presents an opportunity for legal to evolve its role within the enterprise. Rather than being viewed as the “department of no,” legal can step into a more strategic position. It’s not about giving up control but about changing how control is enforced. It’s a shift from being the gatekeeper to being the architect.

Moving risk from centralized to shared

In a “Zero Silos” model, risk stops being binary (approved/not approved) and becomes a shared, measurable discipline. This is achieved through contextual risk management.

Contextual risk management means that not all contracts are created equal, and they shouldn’t be treated equally. A low-value NDA shouldn’t require the same scrutiny as a strategic partnership. As the architect, legal designs the system to recognize the difference:

• Designing the blueprints: Legal pre-approves clause libraries and fallback positions, allowing the business to negotiate within safe parameters.
• Building the code: Embedding AI-driven insights and dynamic playbooks directly into the workflow.
• Structural integrity: Ensuring that high-risk anomalies are flagged for expert review, while standard terms move through “fast lanes.”

This approach frees legal from the drudgery of low-value review, allowing them to focus on high-stakes strategic work. By using the CLM as a service, legal can embed intelligence directly into the workflow via AI-driven insights, dynamic playbooks, pre-approved clause libraries, and automated data extraction techniques.

This is why executive teams are now sponsoring strategic CLM initiatives seeking ROI opportunities outside of traditional legal functions. They don’t just care about risk management; they care about the 10–20% of contract value that leaks through cracks in the process:

• Missed renewals
• Unmanaged escalators
• Unclaimed credits
• Supplier non-performance

When you treat CLM as a product, value leakage becomes quantifiable, supplier performance stops being anecdotal, and renewal failures are visible.

The future of trust: alignment by design

Trust used to be built through the “we know how things work here” model. But that inhibits scalability. In a modern organization, trust is born from visibility.

“Zero Silos” introduces a new version of trust, one based on data, not sentiment: Guardrails are embedded into workflows, obligations are tracked automatically by AI, and approvals are enforced transparently, not through personality. 

When you reach this state, legal moves from “reviewer” to “system designer.” Finance moves from “auditor” to “value realization.” Sales moves from “negotiator” to “effective deal-maker.” People trust the system because it reflects the real world. They trust their colleagues because everyone sees the same data.

The work begins

Organizations don’t fail at contracting because they lack talent, effort, or tools. They fail because their operating model was never designed for shared truth.You can add more software. You can add more approval steps. You can add more training. But none of that fixes the root issue. “Zero Silos” is the shift to a single, shared understanding of value, risk and obligation. To achieve this, you need both the architect and the engine.

This is where the partnership between Stella Legal and Ironclad transforms concept into reality. 

Stella Legal acts as the architect, designing the governance, behaviors, and operating principles that make “Zero Silos” achievable, while Ironclad acts as the engine, operationalizing that architecture. It distributes risk intelligence, removes ambiguity, and turns those principles into a system the business can actually run on day after day, contract after contract.

These aren’t abstract models. Stella Legal has delivered this approach in partnership with Ironclad for global manufacturers, scale-ups, and enterprise procurement teams. This transformation wasn’t driven by technology alone but rather by redesigning the contracting environment, clarifying ownership, structuring risk, standardizing negotiation boundaries, and ensuring data flows cleanly between CRM, CLM, and ERP.

The outcomes speak for themselves: seven-figure leakages prevented, contract cycles accelerated, legal workloads reduced without increasing exposure, and billing accuracy restored.

“Zero Silos” is achievable, and Stella Legal has already designed the blueprint to operationalize this vision with Ironclad. It’s time to stop fighting internal friction and build on a model that has been tested, refined, and delivered in the real world. It’s time for alignment by design.

Read more about how Stella Legal can help transform your contract management processes and to learn more about Ironclad, request a demo today.

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Ironclad is not a law firm, and this post does not constitute or contain legal advice. To evaluate the accuracy, sufficiency, or reliability of the ideas and guidance reflected here, or the applicability of these materials to your business, you should consult with a licensed attorney.