While tariffs fluctuate, supply chains remain unpredictable, and geopolitics disrupt global industries, companies are being forced to move faster — and keep their documents alive.
“Businesses are dealing with macroeconomic changes, the complexity and uncertainty [of which] are changing all the time,” says Dave Osborne, chief executive of Conga, a US-based provider of contract and revenue management software.
“Sometimes you have just weeks to decide which direction to take,” he continues. “Effective planning is extremely difficult, especially if you don’t have access to rich, accurate, real-time data.”
Across sectors, companies are finding speed now matters as much as strategy when it comes to technology implementation.
Hard delivery dates, whether imposed by regulation, technology cut-offs or market cycles, are forcing organisations to rethink contract and document management, and move at pace.
AXA’s race against time
For French insurance group AXA, the pressure to move over to Conga’s product was real and the timeline unforgiving. The company faced what Xavier Leon, an AXA project manager of finance, calls a “hard date.”
The company’s existing contract platform was being decommissioned by year’s end. The clock was ticking to migrate essential systems — without disrupting operations across Europe.
“We had to go live by then,” he says. “As with every project, you start with clear goals, but as you go deeper, you always discover new things. The devil is in the details.”
Meeting the deadline required a high level of coordination, particularly to reconcile different interpretations of GDPR and risk management in different European nations. AXA’s internal teams worked alongside external partners in a series of workshops that doubled as training and problem-solving sessions. “Structure and transparency were critical,” Leon said.
At one point, discussions over data access delayed progress for two months. The stand-off was resolved after the project team organised detailed demonstrations of penetration testing and disaster-recovery measures for auditors and legal officers.
“Security challenges like that are common in every large enterprise project,” Leon says, “but addressing them early prevented last-minute panic.”
Leadership alignment also proved decisive. “The only way to succeed under pressure is to have everyone committed at the top level,” Leon says.
Weekly progress reviews with the chief executive, operations and IT heads kept the project from drifting. When resource constraints arose, decisions were made quickly. “Hard deadlines require unity — from executives down to delivery teams.”
Precision under pressure at Boston Scientific
A similar race against time unfolded at Boston Scientific, the US-based medical technology group.
The company, which treats more than 40 million patients each year, was replacing a decade-old pricing and quoting system across its European operations while simultaneously migrating its enterprise software to SAP S/4HANA.
Missing the go-live date of 25 June would have delayed the wider transformation by a year.
“We made it,” says Diego Martin Colombo, who oversees revenue management at Boston Scientific.
The company ran weekly joint reviews with technology partners and internal product teams, relying on transparency rather than rigid hierarchies. “When we hit issues, there was no finger-pointing, just joint problem-solving. That honesty built trust and kept the project on track.”
His colleague Tjerk Smits emphasises discipline over innovation for its own sake.
“We stayed focused on using standard functionality rather than customising everything,” he says. “That discipline helped us stay on schedule and adopt best practices.”
Hundreds of staff now handle complex pricing and contract processes more efficiently, with remarkably little noise from end users.
Osborne argues that the key to moving at pace is to remove manual bottlenecks while keeping people in control: “AI is here to sit alongside employees, improve productivity and accelerate value.”
“Our vision for AI is grounded in what’s possible today, what’s ethical and secure,” Osborne says. “It’s a tool that augments and empowers people.”
For AXA and Boston Scientific alike, the experience of delivering on hard deadlines was less about technology than governance and culture. Regular communication, ruthless prioritisation and early engagement with security and compliance teams were crucial.
For companies facing their own ticking clocks, the lesson is clear: success depends not just on tools but on trust, transparency and the courage to make tough calls fast.
