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- Third-Party Risk
- 10th Sep 2026
- 1 min read
Practical Steps to Improve Your TPRM Program (2026)
- Written by
In Short..
TLDR: 4 Key Takeaways for Writing Effective Third-Party Questions in 2026
- TPRM is a growing strategic priority: many organisations still struggle with inconsistent processes, complex vendor lists, and poor-quality data.
- Improvement starts with an honest self-assessment: know your strengths, identify weaknesses, and define a realistic, scalable target state, covered in full in The Essential Journey to TPRM Maturity.
- Not all vendors carry equal risk: ranking suppliers by criticality keeps assessments proportionate and meaningful.
- Quality data matters more than quantity: technology only delivers value when used in the right context and embedded into a broader GRC strategy.
- Simple, scalable solutions outperform overly complex tools: organisations see the best results when they start small and mature over time.
Get these right, and TPRM stops being a bottleneck and starts scaling with the business.
A stronger TPRM programme comes down to a sharper process, an honest read of where the programme stands today, and vendor risk management software used in the right place. It's a combination that scales as a vendor list grows, without adding headcount.
We recently looked at the common challenges of managing third-party risk and the considerations for building an effective programme. This piece sets out four practical steps to take it further, plus where technology helps and where it doesn't.
KPMG's 2026 Global Third-Party Risk Management Survey found that only 15% of leaders have high confidence in the data underpinning their programme. Better process and better data close that gap fastest.
Expert View
Matt Davies Chief Product Officer, SureCloud |
What our experts say about programmegaps
“The gaps that hurt teams most sit inside a programme that looks like it's working. I've seen a self-assessment miss a whole vendor tier because nobody owned the review calendar. Fix the ownership gap and the criteria mostly take care of themselves.” |
There are Four Key Actions to Consider:
1. Understand What's Going Well, and What's Not
Conduct a self-assessment of your organisation's TPRM capability. What are your strengths? Where are the weaknesses? It's worth ensuring part or all of the assessment is carried out by an external party, they'll deliver more impartial feedback and are more likely to surface the gaps you've stopped noticing.
2. Understand Your Target State
If your organisation runs a vendor-first strategy with significant outsourcing, you need a clear picture of where your third-party due diligence should end up, not just where it is now. Build a roadmap toward that target state with realistic aims and a pace you can sustain. Trying to mature too much, too fast, tends to stall progress rather than accelerate it.
3. Build Partnerships with Vendors
A close working relationship with critical vendors is central to any TPRM programme's success. Technology helps with monitoring and assessment, but picking up the phone and working through an issue directly resolves it.
4. Simplify Risk Assessments
Become the customer vendors want to work with. Keep assessments proportionate, tailored to what a vendor's product or service actually involves instead of a generic 200-question form. A pragmatic approach gathers better data than an exhaustive one. For more ways to cut the administrative load without cutting corners, see Top Tips to Save Time When Assessing Third-Party Risks.
Not All Vendors Pose Equal Risk
Ranking vendors by importance to your business is a foundational step, and that's true regardless of programme size, though NCSC's supply chain security guidance found that very few UK businesses set minimum security standards for their suppliers at all. Not every vendor carries the same risk: a supplier handling core infrastructure or customer data needs a different level of scrutiny than one supplying office stationery, and even a global name like Microsoft carries different risk depending on what your organisation actually uses it for. See Vendor Tiering 101 for the full four-tier framework and the criteria behind it.
The Importance of Technology and Quality Data
Once vendors are ranked, the data collected about them needs to be usable, not just plentiful. TPRM is a quality problem before it's a quantity problem: extensive questionnaires produce more data, but without the skills or systems to act on it, that data becomes a burden rather than an asset.
What a piece of technology can do matters less than why you need it. Tools chosen without that context rarely earn back the investment.
Standalone Versus GRC Tools
A key decision when choosing TPRM technology is whether it should stand alone or sit inside a broader GRC programme.
Standalone tools are attractive for a reason: purpose-built features, fast deployment, lower upfront cost. What they tend to lack is scalability and the structure to mature alongside the programme. GRC platforms ask for more upfront planning and a clearer roadmap, but scale with the business and remove the information silos a standalone tool leaves behind.
Gartner's own research agrees: "a siloed approach to third-party management across disparate functions doesn't tend to work well."
When you're ready to compare specific platforms, see 10 Third-Party Risk Management Software Compared or How to Evaluate Vendor Risk Assessment Platforms: A UK Buyer's Guide.
Keep It Simple and Reap the Rewards
The biggest risk to a maturing TPRM programme is maturing too quickly. It adds functionality and complexity that outpaces what the team can run. Choose what fits the business today, start simple, and build in the capacity to scale only when the programme is ready for it.
Third-party risk keeps getting more complex, and that's the reality every programme has to work within. The programmes that improve fastest have an honest read on where they stand and a realistic plan to close the gap.
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