Buyer's guide · PDF
The GRC Buyer's Guide
How to decide whether you need a GRC platform, what to ask, and how to test it before you sign.
Who it is for
Heads of risk, compliance, information security and IT, and the finance and procurement teams who sign off.
What is inside
- 1. Do you need a platform yet?
- A short test based on frameworks, owners and audit pain
- When a disciplined spreadsheet is still the right answer
- 2. Ten questions for every vendor
- What to ask, what a good answer sounds like, and what to worry about
- 3. The weighted scorecard
- Eight criteria with suggested weights and a 1–5 scale
- A worked example for two vendors
- 4. Deployment and data residency
- SaaS or on-premise, licence control and where your data is stored
- Questions for your security and legal teams
- 5. A two-week proof of value
- What to load, who to involve and how to judge the result
- 6. Common mistakes
- Buying a framework instead of a control library, ignoring auditors, underestimating owners
A look inside
The most common mistake in buying GRC software is buying a long list of features. The better question is what you will do differently on the first Monday after go-live. If the honest answer is “look at a dashboard”, you are buying a screen.
Insist that a vendor loads your own framework in the first meeting. Whatever they say, what you see in that hour is what you will live with.
The rest unlocks when you enter your details.