What Are Vendor Risk Management Software: Costing, Features & More

As soon your company starts getting bigger, farming out work will become crucial. Whether it’s collecting materials from manufacturers or onboarding freelancers to improve your marketing efforts, third-party vendors have become an important part of all developing businesses.

There are several advantages in giving opportunities to third parties in any institution. Plus, it will expose your organization to new ventures that you might not have considered. Many of you might also think- how can anyone check that the vendors are compatible with the risk management efforts?

This is where VRM- Vendor Risk Management enters the scene.

 VRM software aims to present a management framework to determine, measure, audit, and lighten the risks related to third-party vendor management. It will also permit you to estimate the potential risk associated with vendors, IT contractors, and service providers.

We will discuss in detail Vendor Risk Management software, its features, and all the other things related to it. Let’s start!

About Vendor Risk Management Programme

Vendor risk management (VRM) is a risk management software that aims to pinpoint and evaluate the risks and ventures integrated with vendors. VRM software will give your business an insight into the vendors your organization works with, how you work with them, and details about how many of them have implemented sufficient security controls.

As a software, VRM is gracefully emerging. Per diem organizations are acquainted with new security, privacy, conformity, and business continuity challenges associated with vendors. Due to the pandemic, WFH and digital transformations hastily increase the dependence on vendors (primarily the cloud providers). 

Thus, making VRM a persistent, board-level concern. Moreover, the functions of vendor risk management can alter depending on company size, protocols, jurisdiction, type of industry and many more. It is also called Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM), and VRM is much more than general risk management; it is about guidance, risk, and manageability.

Cyberattacks are good examples that underline the importance of addressing organizational vulnerabilities and vendor risks. Organizations can no longer avoid such risks. VRM will help fill these gaps.

The vendor Vendorement software is a solution and a tool that will help any organization to manage third-party risks and related consent standards. VRM software uses the data from network tools and supply chain management software to get an insight into vendors data and compliance objectives.

Hire highly experienced developers from Extern Labs Inc who have helped many startups and Businesses in developing innovative Vendor Management Software.

VRM Features

1) Compliance strategies for both internal and external authority relevant to supplier risks.

2) Supplier gateways for third and even fourth parties and vendors to deliver adequate documents.

3) Ongoing surveillance of suppliers and modifications in supplier risk status.

4) Templates meant for supplier risk control, oversight, and assessments.

5) Data to view progress in minimizing third-party risk exposure.

6) Action effort for working with vendors from attainment till termination.

What Is The Need For Vendors Risk Management

Recent events like Covid-19 Pandemic, cyberattacks, ransomware breaches, natural disasters have made vendor-associated risks abundantly understandable. All these events have crushed thousands of businesses and their third party-the vendors, notwithstanding the type of industry, company size, or country. 

 Companies have been expanding their organization by outsourcing their important tasks to their vendors in recent times. But, as the saying goes- every coin has two sides, so this also has both advantages and risks. 

While dealing with third parties, one can save money and deal with things more smoothly and efficiently, but it also creates vulnerabilities.

To understand its importance more clearly, assume that-

Your company depends on a Google cloud service to operate its mobile application. Now, if Google cloud has an interruption, your customers will not be able to access your app.

Similarly, if you are associated with any ride-hailing service, let’s say Uber. As you know, they depend on contract drivers, but if any one of the drivers goes on strike, it can be a big challenge for you to deal with and not to mention, it will affect your company as well.

We also cannot deny the fact that outsourcing is an important factor in running any business these days. Because it will not only save money, the organization can also take advantage of the expertise that they might not have. However, due to some of its downsides, it can make an organization vulnerable.

Thus, efficient VRM software is required to minimize the impact of any kind of disruptive events and to minimize the overall risk exposure in a company. But it also doesn’t mean that the VRM programs can only reduce risks; it has more to them.

The company’s that have employed Vendor risk management programmers can assess and incorporate new vendors more smoothly by getting the right tools in the right hands.

In addition to this, VRM software can allow organizations to monitor their vendor relationship over time, diagnose new risks as soon as they arise and evaluate vendor’s performance.

How To Implement A Risk Management Software?

The implantation of VRM software largely depends on the organization size and the overall scale of the vendor management program. The common steps for employing vendor risk management software are-

1. Choose A Software

Understand in detail the software requirements and your needs.

2. Teach Your Team

Analyze the important functions and understand how the particular programme can meet your needs.

3. Generate Your Vendors Inventory

Import the vendor’s list and arrange the features you want to track for each of your vendors. In case, if you don’t have a vendor list, then also you can identify vendors by conducting vendor discovery assessments or by using a self-service portal for company users.

4. Categorize Your Vendors

With thousands, even dozens of vendors, it gets difficult to understand which one matters the most. One can solve this problem by categorizing the vendors into different layers.

5. Select Your Evaluation Substructure

There are various standards to evaluate the vendors. And also, there is no “correct” evaluation framework that works for every business. However, some of the common evaluation standards that can work for your company are-

• ISO 27001
• ISO 27701
• CSA CAIQ
• SIG Lite
• NIST SP 800-53

6. Create Your Evaluation Methodology

While developing an evaluation process, it’s essential to consider some questions like-

• How do you know when a new vendor evaluation is required?
• Who should have the power to launch a vendor’s evaluation?
• Who will review the evaluations?
• What type of evaluation question can generate risks?
• How are flagged risks reported?
• How often do you have to reassess your vendors?
• Will you conduct the evaluation yourself, or will software work for you?

 However, because of the pandemic, many organizations are choosing remote audits to avoid going onsite.

7. Create Automation Workflows

As you underline different workflows, select where you can apply automation, this will save your time. Every business has different vendors risk management workflows. To simplify these workflows, focus on the repeatable tasks and processes. Then start configuring them for automation.

8. Build Your Dashboards

Every vendor risk professional has a wish list of analytics they like to access. So, it’s best to do this while implementing a VRM programme. The most standard matrices are-

• Total number of vendors
• Vendors by risk level
• Status on all vendors risk evaluation.
• Amount  of expired vendor contracts
• Risk history overtime

9. Polish Your Program From Time To Time

VRM is not a static regime. New risks and requirements keep emerging; that is why it is important to refine your program over time.

Top Vendor Risk Management Tools

Here is the list of top VRM software tools depending on vendors reputations, standard traits, user reviews, ratings, and more-

Aravo Third-Party Management

It is a SaaS-based vendor management tool that provides three product tiers for its supplier management solutions, performance management, and data privacy solutions. It is highly flexible and configurable and pricing is also decent.

BitSight

is a security rating platform and VRM. started in 2010. And its popularity is because its customers are 50% of world cybersecurity insurance premiums. It holds 32 patents and 40 million companies rated, and utilizes proprietary algorithms to onboard vendors faster.

Galvanize

it is the oldest and most eminent vendor that started its journey in1998. And after 20 years, its diligence acquired the risk, and compliance vendor to $1 billion. The Galvanize third-party bond is an automated tool for continuously identifying vendor relationship data to manage risks.

Ivalua

is a comprehensive management program and offers solutions through the SaaS platform. 70+ countries are running according to the Ivalua platform’s intelligence. For VRM the platform provides interactive risk analytics, scorecards, and supplier risk scores. 

MetricStream

it is an enterprise solution and provides quality management and risk management. Its VRM program provides integrated insight into the extended enterprise.

Costing Of VRM Software

For any software development, pricing is a great fuss. The overall cost of any software is determined based on the features it offers. And also, costing can be different in different locations. Plus, the labour cost might also get added for operational purposes.

So, if you want to understand the actual cost, you have to book a call with the sales team of the VRM software development business.