The Vendor Assessment Secret - Stop Asking More Questions and Start Using Better Data

Traditional vendor questionnaires are no longer enough to support modern Third-Party Risk Management.

Instead of beginning every assessment with another lengthy request for information, organizations should make better use of existing evidence, automate repetitive processes, and focus expert attention only where genuine risk gaps remain.

That is the clear message emerging from new research examining how third-party risk teams are modernizing their assessment practices.

The report, From Evidence to Action: How Leading Teams Modernize Third-Party Risk Management, was compiled by The Center for Financial Professionals (CeFPro) in partnership with ProcessUnity, one of the world’s leading providers of Third-Party Risk Management software, AI Technology, and data solutions¹ that help organizations automate vendor assessments, strengthen cyber risk oversight, and manage risk across the third-party lifecycle

The report demonstrates that as vendor portfolios expand, regulatory expectations increase, and technology ecosystems become more interconnected, manual, questionnaire-led operating models are struggling to keep pace.

The future lies not in eliminating questionnaires altogether, but in using them as one component of a broader, data-first assessment process.

The manual model is reaching its limits

The report identifies manual effort as one of the biggest obstacles preventing organizations from scaling their third-party risk programs effectively.

According to the findings, 38% of respondents still manually map vendor evidence to security controls using spreadsheets or documents, while another 22% admitted their organizations do not map evidence consistently and instead rely largely on narrative reviews.

Although these approaches remain familiar and flexible, they become increasingly difficult to sustain as vendor populations, evidence requirements, and regulatory scrutiny continue to grow.

The report also highlights where assessment teams lose the greatest amount of time. Collecting evidence from vendors was identified by 32% of respondents as the largest source of operational friction, while 25% pointed to following up on missing information or unanswered questions.

These findings suggest that much of today's assessment workload is consumed not by analyzing risk, but by chasing documentation, coordinating responses, and manually determining whether available evidence satisfies specific control requirements.

Rather than creating better risk insight, these activities often delay decision making while placing increasing pressure on already stretched assessment teams.

That operational drag is exactly what evidence-sharing networks are designed to remove. Rather than every organization independently re-collecting the same audit reports and certifications from the same vendors, a shared exchange lets teams start from validated data and spend their limited hours on the reviews that actually need human judgment.

Start with what is already known

The report argues that in order to build scalable risk management models, organizations should not assume every vendor assessment must start from scratch. Instead, they should build on data that’s already available to them, whether directly from the vendor or from externally available data scans or risk indicators.

Previous assessments, completed standard questionnaires, audit reports, certifications, vendor profiles, and other supporting documentation provide a substantial foundation before any new information needs to be requested.

As the report explains, "A strong, scalable approach to third-party assessments starts with what is already known, rather than treating each review as a blank-slate exercise." Existing evidence can then be connected to the controls under review, allowing teams to identify precisely where information is already available, where evidence has become outdated, and where genuine gaps still exist.

That change in perspective fundamentally alters the purpose of follow-up activity. Instead of repeatedly requesting broad sets of information, practitioners can concentrate on validating specific controls that are relevant to the vendor relationship or resolving clearly defined evidence gaps.

The report concludes that this "reduces rework and moves assessments away from broad, repeated evidence collection toward targeted validation."

Evidence should drive the workflow

The research also demonstrates why simply collecting more vendor information is not enough. Questionnaires continue to play an important role by gathering structured information from vendors, but they should no longer dictate the entire assessment process.

According to the report, organizations frequently ask vendors for information they already possess, creating unnecessary duplication while delaying meaningful validation work.

A more effective workflow begins with examining existing data, including inherent risk, vendor profiles, prior assessments of the vendor in question, audit reports, certifications, completed questionnaires, external security signals, system access, processing activities, and service context.

By compiling the existing information you have, teams can focus on the key areas of control evidence they still need, and the number of repetitive questions can be reduced.