The problem is not approval itself
Most companies already have approvals. Discounts may go to Finance. Liability clauses go to Legal. Delivery dates go to Operations. Security promises may go to Security. That is sensible.
The gap appears when those approvals answer separate questions but no one answers the combined one: should this exact promise be made as a whole?
A deal can therefore be fully approved and still carry weak economics, unsupported assumptions or a combination of terms that creates delivery exposure.
Approval and clearance answer different questions
Approval asks whether the right person has signed off within the rules. Commitment Clearance asks whether the promise itself should be made, given the authority, evidence, economics, delivery reality and interaction between terms.
Both matter. One does not replace the other.
A discount may be within the CFO-approved range. A 45-day implementation may be within delivery policy. A 99.99% SLA may be standard for the service. Yet the combination may require more specialist capacity than the margin can support.
What good commercial judgment needs
The buyer language is simple: does the deal protect margin, does cash still work, can delivery do it, and are we accepting a risk because it is worth accepting—or because the pieces were reviewed separately?
The objective is not to add another gate. It is to get the full commercial picture early enough to change the proposition.
That is also why a mature control should make standard deals move quickly and focus human judgment on exceptions that change the economics or delivery reality.
A practical test
Take one recently approved non-standard deal. Put the final discount, payment terms, implementation timeline, SLA, custom work, service credits and liability positions on one page.
Then ask: did one person or one system judge the combined commitment before it went out?
If the answer is no, the company has approvals. It may not yet have Commitment Clearance.