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The benefit of obtaining the Certified Implementation Specialist - Vendor Risk Management (CIS VRM) Exam Certification

It's all a matter of risk. First and foremost, a properly designed and well-run vendor risk management program would decrease risk. Third parties have the potential to expose your organization to the risk of a violation, non-compliance, financial penalties, and reputational harm, particularly those handling sensitive data. You've probably taken those risks down to a degree that at a minimum, suits your risk appetite if your VRM program is humming along. (Side note: If you read Part 1 of our series, you will know that vendor risk management aims to reduce, not eliminate, vendor risk to an acceptable level.)

You can take a deep breath and concentrate on driving the most value from your vendor partnership, with third-party risk properly mitigated. Cost slashing, not corners. There are expensive and inefficient ad hoc vendor risk management systems. It can be even more so to operate without a vendor risk management program, especially when you consider the costs associated with data loss, remediation work, and enforcement fines.

Although it takes an initial cost to build a vendor risk management program from the ground up the long-term benefits are priceless. Ultimately, the expense of dealing with suppliers is minimized, as, during initial onboarding, a centralized and structured process for rating suppliers removes the need for duplicative and expensive reviews if the supplier interacts with a new area of the organization. For the first time, do it right, and the long-term costs are merely the expense of constant vendor monitoring.

The operating costs of assessing suppliers are also minimized by centralizing and standardizing your vendor risk control. If IT, compliance, sourcing, and risk management both carry out different risk evaluations of new suppliers, you are likely to see organizational inefficiencies that push up the cost of evaluating each supplier (and giving your vendors headaches). It can dramatically reduce your labor and costs by centralizing these operations into a single VRM function.

Danger comprehension over time. A well-designed vendor risk management program creates better metrics to compare risk scores between competing vendors, providing you with simple, repeatable, reliable metrics to assess your vendors' risk levels. Of course, during initial seller selection, this is helpful, but it can also be used during contract recompetes and renewals. Knowing the risk score of a vendor (ideally maintained up-to-date through ongoing monitoring) enables you to award contracts to “low trouble” vendors, those with a proven track record of strong internal controls and data protection mechanisms, reducing the total cost you will spend over the lifetime of the contract on vendor maintenance, monitoring, and mitigation.

Leverage Gaining. Engaging third parties requires negotiation, and your company has tight competition. Knowing a supplier's risk profile gives you leverage to require the prospective supplier to change their behavior in certain ways. In some cases, as you seek to reduce the cost of the vendor to allocate funds to risk mitigation, it may also give you a tool to negotiate to price. Both of these results allow improved vendor behaviors and cost reductions, resulting in positive impacts on your relationship with your business and vendor.

Maintaining conformity. The reality that the vendor ecosystem of a company serves as an extension of the company and should be treated as such has been recognized by most new industry frameworks and data privacy regulations.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU is the first regulation to keep data processors, mostly suppliers, equally accountable in the event of a violation (as discussed in Part 3 of our series). It also puts increased focus on getting appropriate controls in place for the data controller (which is mostly you) to secure data that is being processed beyond your perimeter. This trend seems likely to continue with the post-GDPR wave of regulations, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, requiring you to pay more and more attention to your vendors or face skyrocketing fines in the event of a breach. A powerful VRM program simplifies your compliance efforts and protects you from penalties and fines.

Consistency and continuity of building. Centralized management of vendor risk means that your organization understands vendor risk, not just the individual managing the vendor relationship. If you have changes in departmental leadership, without interruption, new leaders will be able to review and understand each vendor's risk, as well as their historical risk performance.

Besides, unified VRM helps anyone in the company, without having to deal with needless inter-department paperwork, to easily engage approved suppliers for high-priority projects. Expand this concept to complex organizations of portfolio companies or sub-brands, and huge efficiencies will begin to be realized. The accuracy and centralized nature of the reviews ensure that even when internal resources shift, your organization can run efficiently and without interruption.

Reference: https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow/other-documents/training/blueprint-cis-vrm.pdf

ServiceNow CIS-VRM Exam Overview:

Who should take the Certified Implementation Specialist - Vendor Risk Management (CIS VRM) Exam

Individuals who are responsible for implementing Vendor Risk Management should take the Certified Implementation Specialist - Vendor Risk Management (CIS VRM) Exam. ServiceNow clients, partners, staff, and others interested in becoming a ServiceNow Vendor Risk Management Implementer have access to the Certified Implementation Specialist exam.

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