Stanford Health Care Finds $11M in Savings with Better Supplier Contracting

Challenge

Growing complexity exposed the need for better contract visibility and control

Stanford Health Care is internationally renowned for leading-edge and coordinated care across cancer care, neurosciences, cardiovascular medicine, surgery, organ transplant, medicine specialties, and primary care. As part of the Stanford Medicine ecosystem, it operates within a complex healthcare environment where every business decision ultimately supports patient care.

As Stanford Health Care continued to evolve its supply chain operations, the organization saw an opportunity to bring greater consistency, visibility, and accountability to contract management across the enterprise.

Contracts were managed in multiple repositories and systems. Contract data was hard to find, approval processes were inconsistent and negotiated terms like rebates and performance requirements went overlooked.

To address these challenges, the organization made a strategic decision to centralize and standardize how contracts were managed. The objective was not simply to consolidate technology. Stanford Health Care wanted to create a stronger operational foundation that would support greater visibility, stronger governance, and more informed business decisions.

Solution

Building a single source of truth for contracts

To support its vision, Stanford Health Care selected Icertis to replace multiple contract management tools with a single contract intelligence platform. The initiative established a centralized source of truth for contracts across supply chain and procure-to-pay operations.

For Omar Devlin, Executive Director of Supply Chain Technology, P2P and Analytics, this approach aligns directly with his philosophy about supply chain leadership. He says, “One of the reasons I love supply chain so much is because it is about end-to-end management, optimizing across the silos, and ensuring we can break down those fragmented decision-makings into true end-to-end trade-offs.”

Beyond centralization, Stanford Health Care uses Icertis to make contract intelligence more accessible and actionable. Teams can search across thousands of contracts to identify specific clauses, obligations, and areas of potential concern. During a recent legal risk review, the organization used Icertis to quickly search for terms and clauses that had been identified as possible concerns, review flagged contracts, and determine exposure—enabling the organization to operate with confidence moving forward.

Omar also sees long-term value in Icertis’ ability to simplify work for contract professionals and category managers. Icertis capabilities, he says, “are about making our contracts team and our category managers' life easier. They're able to seek clause control. They're able to manage risk easier. We're able to do search criteria across thousands of contracts and say, ‘Tell me where we have a possible issue with gene therapy.’"

Benefits

Delivering faster outcomes and realizing negotiated value

By creating a more connected approach to contract management, Stanford Health Care has already experienced measurable outcomes. 

Contracts move faster through the system: Streamlined workflows have reduced contract turnaround time from 25.4 days to 17.2 days. 

More impactfully, improved access to contract information supports stronger purchasing decisions, greater price accuracy, and fewer transaction errors. When Stanford Health Care evaluated the initiative, it identified approximately $11.6 million in savings associated with better contract management. According to Omar, "We have realized that value through.”

For Stanford Health Care, the success of the initiative reflects more than technology alone. It reflects the combination of the right platform, a clear vision, and a partnership focused on helping the organization evolve its processes and maximize value.

He signs off, “Any technology is only as good as the implementation partner, and I think Icertis has been fantastic at coming to the table, helping us understand how we're going to use it properly, and working with us as we update our business process to use this tool to its full capabilities.”