Government Contract Management: Guide to Automation

Government contracts keep essential services running, from building roads to public health programs. But behind the scenes, managing those contracts is often slow and error-prone. Legacy systems, paper-based workflows, and increasing oversight make it harder for agencies to stay compliant, meet deadlines, and control costs.

As the volume and complexity of contracts grow, so does the pressure to modernize. It comes as no surprise that the contract management software market in the US is expected to reach a valuation of 12.4 billion by 2032. 

In this guide, we’ll break down how automation streamlines government contract management and why FlowForma’s no-code platform is a trusted choice for public sector teams ready to leave paper behind.

What Is Government Contract Management And How Does It Work? 

Government contract management involves overseeing every stage of a public contract from planning and procurement to compliance, performance, and renewal. 

Whether you’re managing a federal contract management process or a regional one, the core steps remain the same:

• It begins in the pre-award phase, where agencies identify their needs, draft specifications, and select vendors through solicitations like RFPs (Request for Proposals) or RFQs (Request for Quotations). This step sets the foundation for performance expectations and budget alignment.
  
  
• In the award phase, contracts are formally drafted, negotiated, and signed. This is where legal, finance, and procurement teams work together to finalize terms, define deliverables, and ensure risk protections are in place.
  
  
• But the real work starts post-award. Contract managers monitor deadlines, track deliverables, process amendments, and conduct performance reviews. Renewal cycles, funding compliance, and reporting obligations also live in this phase, often under tight scrutiny.

The process can quickly become fragmented since these contracts often pass through multiple hands, including compliance officers, financial controllers, legal teams, and external vendors. 

That’s why digital process automation tools are increasingly being adopted: to bring visibility, structure, and accountability into a workflow that otherwise relies on spreadsheets and paper trails.

Current Challenges In Government Contract Management

Challenges in government contract management

From missed deadlines to audit gaps, here’s where traditional government contract management falls short:

1. Paper-heavy and manual processes

Let’s face it—many government contracts are still tied to paperwork. From handwritten forms to Word documents sent over email, every manual step adds room for error. Versions get lost. Approvals fall through the cracks. Teams struggle to figure out who’s responsible for what and when.

These common issues not only slow teams down but also make public sector contract management harder to audit and scale. As a result, departments waste time chasing signatures and resending documents.

2. Compliance and audit risk

For agencies bound by strict regulations like the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) in the U.S. or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, even a single missed compliance step can trigger serious consequences. Manual, paper-based systems often lack the transparency and traceability needed to demonstrate full regulatory adherence. 

FlowForma's compliance module addresses this challenge by providing essential features such as e-signatures, integrated form audit records, and flow snapshots. These tools enable organizations to create fully certified processes that meet regulatory requirements.

Support your compliance with AI-powered process automation

3. Legacy tech and fragmented systems

Tools like InfoPath, SharePoint Designer, or Excel might get the job done, but they weren’t built for today’s complexity. Most lack modern features like centralized dashboards, real-time updates, or automation logic.

Take Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), for example. Before adopting automation, they managed over 100 forms manually, including contract-related workflows. The result? Bottlenecks, inconsistent tracking, and compliance issues across departments.

In this video, you'll hear how Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services moved from legacy to leading-edge, by deploying FlowForma's process automation platform. 

By moving away from manual, paper-based processes, DHHS gained greater visibility across departments and improved audit readiness while staying independent from IT teams throughout the rollout.

Benefits Of Contract Automation For Government

Five benefits of automating government contract management 

1. Faster execution and approvals

Manual contract reviews can stretch across weeks when teams rely on unstructured workflows. Let's look at Vestergaard, a global health company, for example. 

The company faced delays in its internal approval processes, especially for cross-functional tasks that required multiple sign-offs. By switching to FlowForma, Vestergaard streamlined its approvals using no-code workflows with built-in rules and notifications. 

As such, approvals that previously took up to five days are now completed in less than 24 hours. 

Another example is with Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services. The department’s contract management process was one of the most painful bottlenecks. Previously, contracts had to go through six levels of approval, often taking months due to manual emails and coordination. Now automated via the FlowForma Process Automation platform, approval times have drastically reduced. Contracts used to take months to get signed, now they’re approved within 1 to 5 days. 

2. Stronger compliance and audit trails

With automation, every approval, revision, and signature is automatically logged. Digital records are searchable, timestamped, and centralized, making it easier to respond to regulatory requests.

Besides, departments no longer need to interpret different templates or file versions. Standardized documents and rule-based workflows ensure consistency across the board, whether it's a local procurement or a federally funded program.

An example of a government organization securing compliance for contracts is with the Utah Department of Health and Human Services.
The department's internal audit office requires comprehensive records of all contracts, including who approved each step and when. With FlowForma’s audit trails, DHHS can easily track every step of the process, ensuring full compliance with internal policies and regulations. The ability to capture and report on metadata, such as approval timelines and user access, has been a game-changer, saving time, boosting efficient and ensuring compliance. 

In this video, you'll discover how Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services has streamlined its contact management process through automation, improving compliance and ensuring a seamless audit trail.

3. Improved visibility and collaboration

When contracts move between teams, things are likely to get lost. Automation solves that with dashboards that provide real-time insights. 

With proper visibility, concerned personnel can check where a contract stands without chasing updates or pulling reports manually.

Create dynamic dashboards for real-time visibility using FlowForma

This transparency helps teams collaborate better, especially when contract execution depends on input from multiple departments or external partners.

4. Cost savings and scalable efficiency

To reduce manual work and focus on higher-value tasks, Abingdon & Witney College in the UK automated several approval-heavy processes tied to funding and policy compliance. 

Two areas that benefited from automation were task risk assessments and expense claims. 

Before automation, each risk assessment required multiple sign-offs and manual tracking. By introducing structured business process automation, the college now saves over 1,000 staff hours annually across just these two processes.

Caption: See how FlowForma helped Abingdon & Witney College streamline key approval workflows across departments

For public sectors managing hundreds of contracts and amendments each year, the impact is even greater. 

Automating processes doesn't just streamline compliance and approvals—it delivers measurable cost savings. Reduced rework, faster turnaround times, and fewer administrative bottlenecks mean that time saved translates directly into lower operational costs.

What Are The Types Of Government Contracts That Can Be Automated?

While government contracts differ in scope and requirements, many include repetitive, rules-based tasks that are ideal candidates for automation.

Here are the most common contracts government teams can streamline:

3 types of government contract management 

Fixed-price contracts

These contracts are widely used in public infrastructure projects, product procurement, and service agreements. The terms are clear: a set amount is paid once work is delivered. 

Automation helps here by triggering tasks tied to milestones, like sending invoices when a deliverable is marked complete or logging shipment details as equipment is dispatched.

Cost-reimbursement contracts

These are common in research, emergency healthcare response, and federally funded grants, where expenses can shift over time. Manual oversight of allowable costs can quickly get overwhelming. 

Automation solves that by flagging out-of-scope expenses, tracking receipts, and alerting teams when compliance thresholds are about to be breached. 

Time-and-materials contracts

Used frequently for IT consulting or maintenance work, these contracts depend on precise time logging and material use. Automating time entry approvals, rate validations, and invoicing ensures nothing falls through the cracks, even if the project runs over months or involves multiple teams.

Best practices for contract management in government

To achieve scalable results across departments, government teams must establish a strong foundation for contract management.  

Best practices for government contract management

Here’s how to improve contract management for government with automation:

1. Start with digital-first forms

If your contract still begins with a static PDF or email template, you’re already a step behind. Smart digital forms capture cleaner data and minimize manual input. Fields can auto-fill based on vendor IDs, department codes, or previous contract history, saving time and reducing input errors from the start

This video shows how FlowForma makes it easy to build digital forms that drive workflows:

2. Define roles and workflow logic

Not all contracts require the same approval process. High-risk contracts may necessitate legal review, while low-value renewals can be automatically approved. This is where workflow logic becomes essential.

FlowForma allows teams to design no-code workflows that manage routing, escalation, and deadline alerts without the need for programming. 

To make the setup even easier, FlowForma’s AI Copilot provides intelligent suggestions during workflow creation. It helps users define processes faster by recommending logic based on existing workflows. 

Whether you're building a new approval route or updating an existing one, the Copilot improves accuracy and saves time by reducing manual effort and potential errors.

In this interactive demo, you'll see how FlowForma Copilot can build an onboarding process for government administration. 

3. Embed compliance into every step

Contracts should include essential elements like required clauses, version control, and pre-signature validation. Embedding these checks directly into the workflow makes it easier to stay compliant with regulations such as FAR, GDPR, or internal policies. 

Additionally, maintaining digital audit logs helps streamline external reviews and reduce compliance-related stress. 

Also read: For more on how automated workflows support business process compliance, this article by FlowForma offers helpful insights.

4. Secure stakeholder buy-in early

Automation only delivers value when it's actively used. Securing buy-in from key stakeholders—such as contract owners, department heads, and legal teams—is essential for successful implementation. 

One effective strategy is to start with pilot projects that demonstrate clear, measurable benefits. When internal champions share tangible wins, like shorter approval cycles or improved reporting accuracy, it builds momentum and encourages broader adoption across the organization.

5. Track, measure, and optimize over time

Every process has friction points. Are approvals delayed by legal? Are renewal reminders sent too late? Monitoring key metrics—such as SLA breaches, turnaround time, and contract volume—helps optimize workflows over time.

For example, the A14 Integrated Delivery Team in the UK, a joint venture between Costain, Skanska, and Balfour Beatty, automated several workflows with FlowForma, including Material Requisition Requests and Permission to Dig. 

This shift to FlowForma created a centralized data hub accessible from remote locations, improving speed, consistency, and ensuring a digital audit trail for every action.

 Explore how the A14 Integrated Team used FlowForma to digitize field requests and centralize operations on the go.

For large-scale government infrastructure projects, this level of process clarity and control is essential, especially when multiple partners and approvals are involved.

How Contract Automation Works In Practice

Want to see how contract automation works? This short video shows what government contract automation looks like in action with FlowForma: (Utah State) 

1. Digital form creation

It all starts with a digital form. FlowForma allows contract owners to create forms tailored to the type of agreement, whether it's a grant, procurement request, or vendor contract. Smart fields can auto-fill using existing databases, pulling in vendor IDs, department names, or budget codes. 

2. Workflow configuration

Once the form is set, users define the routing logic. With FlowForma’s workflow automation builder, teams can drag and drop rules that guide the contract through various approval stages. 

For example, contracts above a certain value can be automatically routed to legal, while standard renewals go straight to finance. Every condition is built to match real-world policy.

3. Contract document generation

When the form is submitted and the workflow begins, FlowForma can instantly generate the contract document using pre-approved templates. 

4. E-signature and approvals

Contracts are approved directly within the workflow, with built-in e-signature and automatic date-stamping. Every stakeholder gets notified when it's their turn to sign, keeping the momentum intact and approvals trackable.

5. Secure storage and audit logs

Completed contracts are archived in a secure, searchable system. You can filter by contract ID, department, vendor, or approval status. 

Meanwhile, audit logs are created automatically, showing exactly who reviewed, edited, and signed each document—critical for compliance and reporting.

In this interactive demo, you'll see how fast and intuitive it can be to build a government contract risk management process. With just a simple text prompt, Copilot build out a process prototype that can be adapted for any government organization. 

Choose a Smarter Way to Manage Government Contracts with FlowForma 

Contract automation is reshaping how government agencies manage vendor agreements, approvals, and compliance, bringing structure, speed, and accountability to a traditionally manual process. FlowForma offers a no-code, end-to-end solution built with the public sector in mind, allowing teams to automate complex contract workflows without waiting on IT.

With FlowForma, departments can route approvals faster, reduce audit stress, and replace spreadsheets and paper trails with clean, digital workflows. Whether it’s a high-value procurement or a grant agreement, every contract becomes easier to manage, track, and report on.

Start simplifying your government contract management process with FlowForma—book a demo today.