Vendors are (Smart) People, Too

Many compliance/GRC software vendors have been very helpful to me in recent years. A smaller number of vendors have been, well, tools. The tools only have one gear; sell, sell, sell. And they never quite connect me to their customers. The helpful vendors ("solutions?") actively connect me to clients -- the managers and executives in charge of their company's GRC processes -- and then step out of the way. They let their customers do the talking. Granted, the customers mostly have only nice things to say about the software -- but that's fine by me because I'm more interested in their GRC people and process challenges.

This vendor relay is often the easiest way through blunt corporate PR defenses that fail to distinguish between investigative journalists hot on the trail of wrongdoing and business-trade hacks who are interested in finding out what works and what doesn't from a business process perspective. While I'm deeply appreciative that the former exist (particularly the two who co-wrote The Smartest Guys in the Room), I'm squarely the latter: a low-PR-risk geek who understands all those terms spilling out of your finance, accounting, auditing, HR, and risk executives.

I rarely, if ever, cite vendors in print-magazine articles. My editors discourage it, and I agree: it comes across as too much of a technology case study. Plus, if I were a reader, I'd be skeptical of any vendor comments simply because I'd expect those comments to be self-serving on some level. However, I'm going to include some vendor comments in this space for two reasons. First, vendors hire some smart people. Second, these smart people peer inside a whole lot more GRC and compliance programs than the heads of those programs do. In my next entry, I'll ask one of these smart vendor people to identify some of the best buying practices he's witnessed.

A final note today: Since the very recent inception of this blog, I've been scatter-shooting -- working through a grab bag of topics, issues and ideas that have accumulated in the growing GRC section of my mind. The blog is a treat in that the traditional content vehicles -- formal print and online articles -- only let me relay a tiny fraction of all the insights, thoughts and trends that flood my in-basket, Web browser and voice mailbox every week.

I intend to continue this approach for another few weeks. It feels to connect, synthesize and make available useful information that would otherwise remain lurking in both by virtual and organic hard drives. Later, I intend to bring more form to this space; your insights, guidance, suggestions, criticisms and responses will help on that score, so please leave comments.