Renewal management in Sales Cloud

I'm looking for advice from teams that have designed a Salesforce renewal process in Sales Cloud, particularly when customer renewal/continuation decisions don't always align with the legal contract term.

Here's the scenario I'm trying to solve:

A customer signs a 3-year contract for a product/service. The contract is stored in Salesforce and remains valid for the full 3 years.

However, the customer makes an annual usage/continuation decision. For example:

•  Year 1: Customer uses the service 
•  Year 2: We need to determine whether they will continue using it 
•  Year 3: Same 
•  At the end of Year 3, a new contract may need to be created if they continue 

The annual renewal is therefore not necessarily a contractual renewal. It's primarily a way for the Customer Success team to:

•  See upcoming renewal/continuation cycles 
•  Forecast likelihood of renewal 
•  Manage the renewal process 
•  Record whether the customer continued or churned 
•  Report on historical and upcoming renewals 

At the same time, we need to maintain a clean relationship with the actual Contract records

, which are managed by a separate contracting/legal/operations team. 

I’m especially interested in hearing from teams that have dealt with

What has worked well for you, and what would you do differently if you were designing it again?