Key takeaways

• Third-party risk management software helps teams move beyond spreadsheets and manage vendor risk in one structured system.
• Look for software that can assess vendors, score risk, validate evidence, and track remediation without creating more manual work.
• Continuous monitoring matters because a vendor’s risk can change after the initial assessment.
• AI can speed up security questionnaire and assessment workflows, but human review should remain part of important risk decisions.
• Before choosing a platform, check its security, integrations, reporting, audit trails, and ability to scale with your vendor ecosystem.

Introduction

Why Do Spreadsheets Fail?

Spreadsheets are often the easiest way to start tracking third-party risk. For a small vendor list, they can work well enough. The problem starts when the number of vendors, assessments, documents, and remediation activities grows.

A spreadsheet can tell you what you entered into it, but it cannot actively manage the risk for you. As the programme grows, teams often run into problems such as:

• No single source of truth: Vendor information may be spread across multiple spreadsheets, emails, procurement systems, and shared folders.
• Missed deadlines: It is easy to overlook reassessments, remediation deadlines, or expiring certifications when everything depends on manual reminders.
• Scattered evidence: SOC 2 reports, ISO certificates, policies, penetration test reports, and other documents can end up in different locations.
• Inconsistent risk scoring: Different team members may assess similar vendors differently without a standardised scoring process.
• Limited visibility: Creating a clear report for management or auditors often means manually combining information from several sheets.
• No continuous monitoring: A spreadsheet cannot automatically tell you when a vendor’s certification expires, a new breach is reported, or its risk profile changes.
• Poor scalability: A process that works for 20 vendors can become difficult to manage when the organisation has hundreds.

The biggest issue is not that spreadsheets are inherently bad. They simply weren’t designed to manage a growing, continuously changing TPRM programme. Once the team is spending more time maintaining the tracker than actually managing vendor risk, dedicated third-party risk management software starts to make sense.

Features to Look For in a TPRM Software

Not every TPRM platform offers the same level of automation or visibility. When evaluating third-party risk management software, focus on the features that will make your team’s daily work easier while also giving you better control over vendor risk.

 1. Vendor Onboarding

Vendor onboarding is where the risk management process begins. A good platform should help you bring new vendors into the process in a structured way instead of starting with the same lengthy questionnaire for everyone.

Look for a platform that can:

• Collect basic vendor information during onboarding
• Identify the vendor’s level of risk and criticality
• Apply the right assessment based on that risk
• Involve the right stakeholders for review and approval
• Keep a record of the vendor’s onboarding and assessment history

This risk-based approach means a critical vendor gets a deeper assessment, while a low-risk vendor doesn’t create unnecessary work for your team.

2. Vendor Risk Scoring

Once a vendor has been assessed, you need a clear way to understand the level of risk they present.

TPRM software should offer a standardised and configurable risk-scoring system rather than leaving every analyst to make their own judgement. Ideally, the platform should consider factors such as the type of data accessed, business criticality, security controls, compliance evidence, and identified gaps.

The scoring process should also be easy to understand. If an auditor or risk owner asks why a vendor was classified as high risk, your team should be able to see the factors behind that decision.

3. Dashboards and Reporting

A TPRM platform should make it easy to understand the health of your entire vendor portfolio at a glance.

Look for dashboards that show:

• Number of vendors by risk level
• Assessments in progress or overdue
• Open remediation items
• Vendors due for reassessment
• Missing or expired evidence
• Overall vendor risk trends

Good reporting also saves time when leadership, auditors, or compliance teams need an update. Instead of manually combining information from different spreadsheets, your team can access the information directly from the platform.

4. Continuous Monitoring of Vendor Risk

A vendor risk assessment gives you a picture of a vendor at a particular point in time. But vendor risk can change long before the next scheduled assessment.

A good TPRM platform should help monitor important changes, such as:

• Security incidents or breach disclosures
• Expiring certifications
• Newly identified vulnerabilities
• Changes in vendor risk status
• Significant changes to the vendor relationship

The goal is to identify important changes early rather than discovering them during the next annual review.

5. AI-Powered Automation

AI can remove a significant amount of repetitive work from the TPRM process, particularly when dealing with security questionnaires and vendor documentation.

Look for platforms that can use your existing, approved information to:

• Pre-fill questionnaire responses
• Find relevant evidence
• Identify missing information
• Flag potential gaps or inconsistencies
• Reduce repetitive manual reviews

However, AI should support the risk team, not replace its judgement. A good platform should allow people to review and approve important responses before they are finalised.

The quality of the AI also matters. It should be able to recognise when the available evidence doesn’t fully support an answer rather than confidently generating a response that may be inaccurate.

If you’re a vendor, check our automated vendor risk assessment tool.

6. Vendor Evidence Management

Evidence is a critical part of any vendor assessment. A platform should make it easy to collect, organise, review, and track documents such as SOC 2 reports, ISO certificates, security policies, penetration testing reports, and other supporting evidence.

Ideally, the platform should also flag expired or incomplete evidence, so your team doesn’t have to manually check every document each time a vendor is reviewed.

7. Risky Vendor Remediation Tracking

Identifying a vendor risk is only the first step. Your team also needs to track what happens next.

The platform should allow you to assign remediation actions, set deadlines, assign owners, and track progress until the issue is resolved. This creates a clear record of how identified risks were handled and prevents important actions from getting lost in emails or spreadsheets.

8. VRA Audit Trail

Finally, look for a platform that maintains a complete history of assessments, approvals, changes, remediation activities, and monitoring events.

A proper audit trail helps answer simple but important questions: Who reviewed this vendor? What decision was made? When was it approved? What evidence supported the decision?

This becomes particularly valuable during internal audits, customer security reviews, and regulatory assessments.

Questions to Ask Your TPRM Software Provider

Choosing TPRM software is a long-term decision, so a product demo alone isn’t enough. Ask vendors practical questions about how the platform works in real-world situations.

• How does your platform automate vendor onboarding?

Ask what happens after a vendor enters the onboarding process. Does the platform simply collect information, or does it actively guide the team through the next steps?

A good platform should help identify missing evidence, send automated reminders, and guide the team on what needs to happen next based on the information and documents already submitted. This can save the risk team from constantly checking spreadsheets and sending follow-up emails manually.

• How does the platform handle evidence?

Evidence is at the heart of any vendor risk assessment. Ask how the platform collects, stores, reviews, and validates documents such as SOC 2 reports, ISO certificates, security policies, and penetration testing reports.

It’s also worth asking whether the platform can identify missing, outdated, or insufficient evidence and alert the team before it becomes a problem.

• Can it integrate with your existing systems?

Your TPRM platform shouldn’t become another isolated system. Ask whether it can connect with the tools you already use for procurement, GRC, ticketing, identity management, or other security workflows.

Also ask what information can flow between systems and whether integrations require additional development or manual work.

• What security controls does the platform have?

A TPRM platform will hold sensitive information about your vendors, assessments, security controls, and compliance posture. The platform itself should therefore meet a high standard of security.

Ask about access controls, encryption, data protection, security testing, incident response, and how customer data is handled and protected.

• Is the platform SOC 2 compliant?

SOC 2 compliance is an important question when evaluating a platform that will handle sensitive security and compliance information.

Ask whether the provider is SOC 2 compliant, what type of report they maintain, and whether they can provide relevant documentation or assurance reports during your evaluation. This gives your team greater confidence that the platform itself follows appropriate security and operational controls.

TPRM Software Buying Checklist

Before selecting your third-party risk management software, use this checklist to compare vendors:

• Risk-based vendor onboarding and assessment workflows
• Configurable risk scoring
• AI-assisted questionnaire completion with human review
• Evidence collection and validation
• Expiry and missing-evidence alerts
• Continuous vendor risk monitoring
• Remediation tracking and ownership
• Audit trails and regulatory-ready reporting
• Integrations with existing procurement, GRC, and ticketing systems
• Strong security controls and independent security assessments
• Ability to scale as your vendor ecosystem grows
• Customer references from similar organisations

Don’t evaluate every feature in isolation. Think about the complete vendor risk lifecycle and whether the platform can support your team from vendor onboarding through assessment, remediation, reassessment, and ongoing monitoring.

Why Choose narad.io as Your Third-Party Risk Management Software?

narad.io was built by a compliance professional with more than 20 years of experience working with global organisations, including Barclays. The platform is designed around the practical problems security and compliance teams face every day.

With narad.io, teams can automate security questionnaires using AI grounded in their own approved knowledge and evidence. They can easily manage vendor risk with our automated Third-Party Risk Management tool. The tool onboards and assesses vendors, tracks remediation, and manages audit trails and reporting – all from one platform. The platform also provides continuous visibility into vendor risk, helping teams move beyond spreadsheets and point-in-time assessments.

Security is also a core part of the platform. narad.io is SOC 2 compliant and undergoes regular VAPT, giving organisations additional assurance when handling sensitive vendor and compliance information.

For teams looking to move from manual vendor tracking to a more structured and scalable TPRM programme, narad.io brings assessment, evidence, risk management, and ongoing monitoring together in one place.

FAQ

 1. How much does TPRM software typically cost?

Pricing varies depending on the number of vendors, assessment volume, features, and level of automation required. Some platforms offer fixed plans, while others customise pricing based on your organisation’s requirements.

2. Can TPRM software fully replace manual review?

No. TPRM software can automate repetitive tasks such as questionnaire management, evidence collection, reminders, and monitoring. Human judgement is still important when reviewing high-risk findings and making final risk or remediation decisions.

3. Is AI-generated questionnaire completion accurate?

It depends on how the AI is built and what information it uses. A reliable platform should ground its responses in approved policies, previous answers, and supporting evidence while allowing your team to review and approve important responses.

4. Does TPRM software help with regulatory audits?

Yes. A good TPRM platform maintains records of vendor assessments, risk scores, evidence, approvals, remediation activities, and monitoring. This creates an audit trail that makes it easier to demonstrate how third-party risks are being identified and managed.

Conclusion