Third-Party Management Maturity Model White Paper: Find the Right Standards for Your Program

2 minute read

November 2018

ProcessUnity’s recent white paper, the “Third-Party Risk Management Maturity Model,” helps you understand where your third-part risk program is today on the Third-Party Risk Maturity Scale – Informal, Reactive, Proactive, or Optimized – and to gain important insights for growing and maturing your program tomorrow.

Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” But, if you don’t know where you stand in your Third-Party Risk Management program today, it’s awfully difficult to start a journey towards improving it. You may have additional opportunities to reduce risk while also reducing overhead. You may be able to increase your ROI on your risk investments. Your contract and negotiations processes could be significantly improved with the greater control more mature vendor risk management promises. But you can’t begin to work towards these laudable yet achievable goals if you don’t know where your existing program falls on the maturity scale.

The “Third-Party Risk Management Maturity Model” white paper defines each of the four stages of maturity by first outlining the merits of a program in each stage. If you are a small organization with a handful of vendors a simple or “informal” vendor risk program may be enough. However, the paper also defines the risks associated with running a program that is too immature for the business’ risk requirements.  As the business becomes more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly important to grow your program to meet the varied risks and challenges this growth can bring – your risk program must maintain pace with the business.

The white paper also helps you to understand some of the opportunities more mature risk management can provide – full transparency, more effective management of vendors, powerful insight on these vendors through KPIs, SLAs and other performance risk metrics. It goes on to talk about how information from your vendor risk program can influence negotiations for reduced fees and expenses or increased service levels. But you can only take advantage of the opportunities in a robust program if you know how to get there…to do this, you must evaluate where your program is today and THEN plan your path. This white paper can help!

The Third-Party Risk Management Maturity Model white paper is available for download along with a detailed Maturity Matrix to help you (and your team) start with an honest assessment of where your program is today.  If you have additional questions on how automation can help you mature your program or how to bring your existing vendor risk management program to the next level, contact us.

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About Us

ProcessUnity is a leading provider of cloud-based applications for risk and compliance management. The company’s software as a service (SaaS) platform gives organizations the control to assess, measure, and mitigate risk and to ensure the optimal performance of key business processes. ProcessUnity’s flagship solution, ProcessUnity Vendor Risk Management, protects companies and their brands by reducing risks from third-party vendors and suppliers. ProcessUnity helps customers effectively and efficiently assess and monitor both new and existing vendors – from initial due diligence and onboarding through termination. Headquartered outside of Boston, Massachusetts, ProcessUnity is used by the world’s leading financial service firms and commercial enterprises. For more information, visit www.processunity.com.