The savings did not disappear. They leaked.
A contract is signed at a good price. Twelve months later the spend has barely moved. Nobody did anything wrong, and no single failure explains it. That is exactly why it persists.
Leakage is rarely dramatic. It is small percentages on large numbers: a price that was never loaded into the ERP, a volume tier nobody claimed, an auto-renewal that passed unnoticed, a rush order premium that became normal. Individually, none of them are worth a meeting. Collectively, they are the difference between a savings number and a savings result.
Work it once a quarter
The checklist is built to be run against your largest contracts, quarterly, by the person who owns them. Twenty-four checks in five groups: price and rates, contract and compliance, demand and specification, process and payment, and governance.
Most teams find something in the first hour. In our work, the three that fail most often are price loading, unclaimed rebates and auto-renewals that passed unnoticed. All three are recoverable. The first two are usually recoverable retroactively, which makes them the best hour a category manager will spend this quarter.
Rank what fails by contract value
Not every unticked box is worth chasing. Sort the failures by annual contract value and fix the largest three. The rest become the standing agenda for the next supplier review.
This pairs with the savings definition standard, which settles what counts before you measure it, and the realized savings tracker, which shows you which initiatives are converting and which are quietly not.