One of our clients is a prototype security team for a global electronics manufacturer.
This team provides on-site facility compliance for branded products and handles supply chain vendors, destruction, and tracking of intellectual property like blueprints.
The Challenge
Initially, the prototype security team was coordinating all of their vendor risk management operations through email and spreadsheets. This resulted in team members wasting resources emailing vendors back and forth rather than protecting valuable data and streamlining their department. At a minimum, each vendor account had four spreadsheets associated with it. This was overwhelming for the internal team to deal with, resulted in confusion for vendors, and information accuracy was highly unreliable and often vastly outdated.
What the Client needed was a centralized system where they could sort and aggregate vendor data to improve communication and the vendor risk management process for all stakeholders. They believed that they, as a leading global brand, could do better and reached out to Start to discuss potential solutions.
The Solution
To tackle the challenge for a manufacturer of this scale, the Client needed a comprehensive solution that would streamline processes and simplify communication. Start offered the Client a centralized solution for their Vendor Risk Management program that didn’t require multiple spreadsheets or Sharepoint folders. Instead, questionnaires, reports, and communications were accessible to all stakeholders within a single platform.
The introduction of Start allowed assessors, remediators, business users, and vendors around the globe to work in one place without worrying about inaccurate, stale, or lost data. For onsite assessments, the prototype security team was able to take a laptop or tablet on location and input everything directly into the platform.
Reporting underwent a thorough transformation as well. A business intelligence integration replaced the previous manual reporting procedures allowing for better visibility and improved data manipulation. The team now benefits from a high-level view of their Vendor Risk Management process.
Our Client also took advantage of custom development for Start with our development team. They were able to leverage API integrations, as well as tailored workflows and custom fields necessary for their business and vendors.
The Results
Start revolutionized Vendor Risk Management for our Client. It was able to create simple, intelligent processes with easily accessible data for an organization that previously relied on time-consuming, manual work within its VRM program.
The greatest benefit to our Client was automating the vendor assessment process. They were able to tailor questionnaire templates to streamline the audit process and remove any unnecessary questions, which led to reduced friction and timelier vendor responses.
The manual reports that used to take several weeks to deliver were now available much earlier. Our Client found that assessors could easily take customized assessment report templates onsite using the platform and fill out the required information. This saved time on manual audit reporting because Start pulled the entered information directly into a formatted report PDF with the click of a button. Once the report was complete, Start notified the vendor that the report and remediation plan were ready for review.
All of these automations helped to reduce the electronic manufacturer’s prototype security team’s vendor assessment process by 35%, down to 46 days from 70 days. Assessors no longer felt the crunch of preparing multiple extensive assessment reports at once and following up on remediation plans via manual email. Data was now seamlessly handed off between internal and external teams, and vendors could triage remediation requests more quickly and efficiently.
The resulting benefit to ISE has been enormous. The success of this program has encouraged the Client to introduce us to multiple, additional business units within their enterprise which have allowed us to expand our business with them to other departments, and the Client has since invested over $500,000 in paid feature enhancements for the Start platform in addition to their annual subscription fees.
