What happens when a global financial services company manages thousands of contracts across more than two hundred countries, each requiring review, compliance checks, and approvals?

At Western Union, it used to mean inconsistent data, offline communication, and long review cycles. Contract searches were restricted to manual metadata filters. Legal reviews lived in email threads. Updates were tracked through spreadsheets. Teams spent more time chasing information than managing risk or enabling the business.

That changed when Western Union used Levelpath’s AI contract management for contract discovery to bring structure and visibility to its contracting process.

Meet Western Union: International Scale, Complex Operations

Western Union is one of the world’s leading financial services organizations, serving customers in over two hundred countries and employing more than ten thousand people.

Behind the scenes, a procurement team of forty professionals supports sourcing and contracting operations across six countries. Each month, the group manages approximately six hundred project requests and maintains over five thousand active contracts, representing more than $1.1 billion in managed spend.

As Joel Jeffries, Manager of Sourcing Systems, explained, “Before Levelpath, our contracting process was scattered, inconsistent, and non-auditable.”

The Challenge: Manual, Siloed, and Time-Consuming

Western Union’s contract management relied heavily on manual work. Searches depended on metadata that was often incomplete or inaccurate. Reviews required a comparison of clauses line by line. Renewal visibility was inconsistent, and collaboration between legal and procurement depended on offline communication.

“Any searches or bulk work depended on what was manually entered when that contract was created,” Joel said. “Anyone who has worked in contracting understands that manual metadata is never perfect.”

The process created delays, limited transparency, and increased the risk of missed obligations. Teams lacked confidence in their ability to find information quickly or respond to stakeholders in real time.

The Turning Point: Contract Discovery in Action

Western Union decided to modernize its contracting operations with Levelpath’s AI-native platform, built around automation, integration, and intelligent insights.

“Requests come into Levelpath, we handle intake and triage, routing projects to the right people, keeping everything organized,” Joel explained.

The company implemented a connected system for intake, routing, contract discovery, and analytics, all within a single platform. The result was a shift from fragmented workflows to consistent, traceable, and transparent contracting.

Western Union uses Levelpath’s AI contract management solution for:

  • Contract Discovery: Agreements are now fully searchable across the repository. Teams can locate clauses, renewal terms, and risk language instantly, turning hours of searching into seconds.
  • MSA Review Automation: AI compares Master Service Agreements (MSA) against company playbooks, flagging deviations and risky clauses. Review time dropped by 60%, strengthening compliance and governance.
  • SOW Checklist Automation: Statements of Work (SOW) are analyzed alongside master agreements to identify missing clauses and non-standard terms. Reviews that once took hours now take minutes.
  • AI Assistant: Levelpath’s AI assistant summarizes agreements and delivers insights on demand, giving procurement and legal teams immediate, data-backed answers to their contract questions.

“The biggest thing for me with Contract Discovery is that we keep finding new use cases for it,” Joel said. “Once you start using it, you keep thinking of new ways to use it.”

The Results: Faster, Clearer, and More Confident

The impact was immediate.

Teams gained full visibility into their contract landscape. Reviews that once took days now take hours. Leaders in meetings can pull up contract insights instantly. Audit and reporting cycles that used to span weeks have been cut in half.

“Teams have been in calls with leadership and can instantly pull up answers,” Joel said. “It is like having a paralegal who knows every contract.”

The results include:

  • 60% percent reduction in review time for supplier MSAs
  • Weeks saved during annual audit cycles
  • Immediate access to obligations, renewals, and risk terms
  • Stronger cross-functional collaboration between procurement and legal

“AI is not meant to replace people,” Joel said. “It is meant to help them. The more our team uses it, the more they rely on it.”

Why This Matters

Western Union’s story shows that using AI in procurement is not about replacing human judgment. It is about improving visibility, accelerating decision-making, and enabling teams to focus on strategic work.

Levelpath’s AI-native architecture, powered by its Hyperbridge reasoning engine, connects intake, sourcing, supplier management, and contracting processes seamlessly across systems. It transforms fragmented manual work into connected, intelligent workflows that evolve with the business.

Your Next Step

AI contract management is no longer a future concept. It is a practical solution available today.

Procurement and legal leaders can start by automating a single workflow, such as contract review or renewal management, and expand from there.

To learn how your organization can modernize contract management through AI-native workflows, request a demo or watch the AI Masterclass: Clause to Clarity on demand.

–Gemma