If Your TPRM Tool Cannot Scale With You, It Is Already Obsolete

Recently I sat down with Matt Davies and Gabriel Few Wiegratz to explore a challenge that is quietly emerging across many organisations: why third party risk management programmes that work perfectly well at the beginning often struggle to keep pace as the business grows.

At first glance, the problem appears straightforward. Many organisations introduce a TPRM tool because they are overwhelmed by vendor questionnaires, ad hoc supplier assessments and fragmented governance processes. A platform promises structure, automation and consistency. In the early stages it often delivers exactly that.

Yet as our discussion unfolded, it became clear that the real challenge rarely lies in the mechanics of questionnaires themselves. The underlying issue is architectural. Too many organisations implement a tool before they have fully considered the operating model that tool is meant to support.

As Matt observed during the conversation, organisations frequently assume that buying technology will resolve the complexity of third party risk management. In reality, technology can only improve a process that already exists. If the organisation has not defined what effective risk management looks like, the platform simply digitises ambiguity.

What begins as a questionnaire management issue therefore evolves into something far more complex. Vendor ecosystems expand. Customer due diligence requests increase. Supply chains deepen. Fourth party exposure becomes more visible. Regulatory expectations grow.

At that point the question changes fundamentally. The issue is no longer whether the organisation has a TPRM tool. The issue is whether the organisation has built a risk operating model and governance architecture capable of scaling with the business. 

One of the most important points raised during the discussion was how frequently organisations misplace responsibility for third party risk management.

In many environments, TPRM is treated primarily as a security function. Security teams review controls, respond to vendor questionnaires and conduct technical assessments. Over time the programme begins to resemble a security workflow rather than an enterprise governance capability.

Gabriel challenged this assumption directly during our conversation. From his perspective, the idea that TPRM is fundamentally a security issue reflects a misunderstanding of how vendor relationships operate within modern organisations.

Suppliers interact with multiple parts of the business. Procurement teams negotiate contracts. Product teams integrate technology. Operations teams depend on external services. Commercial teams rely on partners to deliver customer outcomes. The risks introduced by these relationships therefore extend far beyond the technical domain.

Seen in this context, third party risk management becomes a business capability rather than a security exercise.

This distinction has important implications for how organisations design their governance models. If a TPRM programme is built exclusively around security workflows, it quickly struggles to gain adoption across the wider enterprise. Other business units perceive it as a compliance hurdle rather than a shared responsibility.

The objective of third party risk management should be the opposite. When designed correctly, it enables organisations to engage suppliers with confidence, adopt new technologies safely and manage external dependencies without slowing down the business.

Another theme that emerged during our discussion was the industry's long standing reliance on questionnaires as the central mechanism for vendor assurance.

Questionnaires provide structure. They allow organisations to gather evidence from suppliers and document due diligence activities. For many years they have been the primary instrument of third party governance.

However, as Matt pointed out, the industry’s fixation on questionnaires often obscures the deeper challenge that organisations are actually trying to solve.

Questionnaires capture a snapshot of assurance at a particular moment in time. They confirm that a vendor provided information and that an assessment took place. What they do not necessarily reveal is whether the underlying risk has changed since that assessment occurred.

This highlights a crucial distinction between compliance activity and genuine risk management.

A compliance mindset asks whether an assessment was completed according to policy or regulatory expectation. A risk management mindset asks whether the organisation still understands the exposure created by that supplier relationship.

When vendor ecosystems were relatively small, periodic questionnaires may have been sufficient. But as organisations begin managing hundreds or even thousands of suppliers, this model becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

The problem is not the questionnaire itself. The problem is treating the questionnaire as the primary mechanism for understanding vendor risk.

As our conversation progressed, we turned to the concept of scale, which is where many TPRM programmes begin to encounter structural limitations.

Scale in third party risk management is not simply about the number of suppliers an organisation works with. It manifests across several dimensions simultaneously. Businesses must manage growing vendor ecosystems, increasing internal requests for supplier onboarding, expanding customer assurance demands and more complex regulatory obligations.

Under these conditions, tools that initially seemed perfectly adequate can quickly become restrictive.

Matt described a pattern that many organisations will recognise. Platforms are typically configured around the organisation's current processes. Workflows, questionnaires and governance structures reflect the needs of the programme at the time of implementation.

However, those needs inevitably evolve.

Regulations change. Business priorities shift. Supplier relationships become more complex. New technologies are introduced.

If the platform cannot adapt quickly to these changes, the organisation becomes constrained by the design decisions made during the original implementation.

In practical terms, governance processes begin to slow operational activity. Supplier onboarding becomes slower. Technology adoption becomes more difficult. Business teams perceive risk management as an administrative barrier rather than a strategic capability.

In competitive markets, this delay can have real consequences. If one organisation requires months to approve a new supplier while competitors can complete the same process in weeks, the governance model itself becomes a limiting factor in innovation and growth.

Our discussion eventually turned toward how third party risk management is likely to evolve over the coming years.

Traditional TPRM programmes rely heavily on periodic assessments. A vendor is assessed during onboarding and perhaps reassessed every few years. In between these checkpoints, visibility into supplier risk can be limited.

This approach becomes increasingly impractical as vendor ecosystems expand.

Most organisations cannot simply solve the problem by hiring more risk analysts. As Matt noted during the discussion, the question many teams are now asking is not how to increase headcount but how to make existing teams significantly more effective.

Automation and artificial intelligence are beginning to play a role here.

AI can assist in retrieving trust centre documentation, monitoring changes in assurance artefacts such as SOC reports, identifying updates to certifications and recommending actions when vendor risk indicators change.

Importantly, this does not remove human oversight from the process. Instead, it allows risk professionals to focus their attention on interpreting risk rather than collecting information.

Gabriel described the direction of the market as two parallel developments. On one side, organisations are introducing automation to streamline operational governance processes. On the other, they are enriching risk data with additional sources of insight that help validate supplier assurances.

Both trends ultimately serve the same purpose: increasing confidence in the organisation's understanding of third party risk.

Another critical issue raised in our discussion was the danger of implementing third party risk management as a standalone capability.

Vendor risk rarely remains confined to the boundaries of a single workflow. A third party issue may introduce cyber risk, operational disruption, regulatory exposure or financial consequences.

If these insights remain isolated within a separate tool, organisations struggle to integrate them into their broader governance processes.

Matt highlighted a practical example. If a vendor assessment identifies a material risk, that information should feed directly into the organisation's enterprise risk register and governance framework. If it remains trapped within a separate system, it can easily be overlooked.

The same problem appears at leadership level.

Executives and board members need a clear, unified view of organisational risk. If they must consult multiple disconnected systems to assemble that picture, the governance architecture itself becomes fragmented.

This is why many organisations are beginning to view TPRM not as a standalone capability, but as part of a broader GRC platform and risk infrastructure.

When vendor insights connect directly to enterprise risk management, policy oversight and compliance activities, governance becomes significantly more effective.

Our discussion made one thing clear.

Third party risk management is undergoing a fundamental shift.

Vendor ecosystems are expanding. Supply chains are becoming more interconnected. Regulatory expectations are increasing. At the same time, organisations are under pressure to move faster and operate more efficiently.

This combination exposes the limitations of many traditional TPRM approaches.

Tools designed purely around questionnaire management struggle to scale. Standalone solutions fragment risk visibility. Rigid platforms become difficult to evolve as governance models mature.

The organisations that succeed will approach TPRM differently.

They will treat it as part of their risk infrastructure, not simply as a compliance workflow.

They will connect third party insights directly into enterprise risk management.

And they will design governance systems that evolve alongside the business itself.

Because ultimately the question is not whether you have a TPRM tool.

It is whether that tool can support the organisation you are becoming.

If it cannot scale with you, it is already becoming obsolete.