How to Streamline Vendor Risk Assessments and Reduce Team Burnout

Modern security teams face mounting pressure: managing dozens (or hundreds) of vendors, each with evolving risk profiles, contract terms, and security postures. The result? A never-ending cycle of assessments, reminders, follow-ups, and documentation. It’s no wonder teams are overwhelmed and potentially your vendor risk processes are suffering.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. By embracing smarter workflows, leveraging AI, and incorporating managed support, you can dramatically reduce manual effort and stress while raising your security bar. Here's how.

1. Clarify and Centralize the Process

Step 1: Document Your Full Workflow
Transparency starts here. Map every step of your vendor risk process—request initiation, questionnaires, evidence collection, analysis, remediation, and reporting. Capture who’s responsible for what and how long each step takes on average. This gives you a baseline to improve from.

Step 2: Use a Centralized Vendor Risk Platform
Email chains and spreadsheets don’t cut it. Central platforms create a single source of truth. Teams can see which vendors are in-flight, which documents are outstanding, and who’s overdue. That reduces back-and-forth emails and prevents duplication. Integrations with ticketing systems like Jira or ServiceNow can further embed risk management into daily workflows.

Expert Perspective: Security analysts often feel like they're juggling too many balls, one centralized place helps ground everyone and avoids the panic of “Oops, did I already download that PDF?”

2. Adopt AI to Automate Mundane Tasks

A significant amount of vendor risk work is repetitive from reviewing checkbox responses, checking document types, flagging missing items etc. That’s why AI has become a game-changer.

Step 1: Implement AI for Initial Screening
Choose a platform with AI capabilities that can parse vendor questionnaire responses and documents. AI can quickly identify metadata, compare responses to benchmarks, and flag missing or risky items automatically.

Step 2: Automate Risk Grading
Rather than manual scoring, AI can classify vendor risk levels based on predefined rules (e.g., access to sensitive data, presence of encryption). That speeds up the process and ensures consistency across assessments.

Step 3: Use Smart Reminders
AI-powered systems can handle nudging vendors for overdue documents, following up with internal stakeholders for approvals, or escalating delays without adding to your workload.

Expert Perspective: Picture fewer nights of chasing vendors and more evenings off. A little tech magic goes a long way in saving time and stress.

3. Outsource High-Complexity Tasks

Automation can cover a lot, but some tasks like interviewing vendor security teams or evaluating detailed SOC reports still need human expertise.

Step 1: Define What to Outsource
Make a list: Do you need technical validation? Deep-dive interviews? Failure remediation support? These are great candidates for managed services.

Step 2: Partner with Experts
Thirdsentry’s fully managed TPRM within your platform enables you to offload the heavy lifting. Security professionals conduct vendor interviews, SME reviews, and document deep dives - all aligned with your policy standard.

Expert Perspective: Instead of pushing your team to become spreadsheet sherpas, let them focus on strategic work—while expert partners handle expert tasks.

4. Build a Smooth, Milestone-Based Vendor Experience

Vendors aren’t always thrilled to receive dense security questionnaires, especially if they’re busy. Reduce friction with better UX and conservative timing.

Step 1: Create a Simple, Personalized Intro
Start with a warm, branded onboarding message explaining why the assessment is happening, how long it’ll take, and who to contact with questions.

Step 2: Break the Questionnaire Into Milestones
Instead of 150 questions at once, build short, targeted sections like basic details, technical controls, and policy evidence. Completing sections incrementally feels less overwhelming to vendors.

Step 3: Provide Helpful Resources
Short answer guides (“What does encryption at rest mean?”) eliminate confusion and reduce vendor support emails.

Expert Perspective: People appreciate when it’s easy, simple onboarding and bite‑sized milestones mean fewer roadblocks and faster, smoother completion.

5. Monitor and Iterate with Agile Metrics

Once your streamlined process is in place, your next goal is continuous improvement. Establish clear metrics to gauge performance and iterate like a product team.

Step 1: Define Key Metrics

• Average time to complete each milestone (questionnaire start → finish; evidence submission; internal review)

• Vendor drop-off rate at each stage

• Time spent by internal teams per vendor

Step 2: Set Realistic SLA Goals
Aim for measurable targets e.g., 80% of vendors complete initial questionnaires within 10 business days, 90% of remediation tasks closed in 30 days.

Step 3: Foster Agile Reviews
Schedule monthly or quarterly retrospectives. Review where delays are occurring, invite feedback from internal and external stakeholders, make targeted improvements.

Expert Perspective: Regular check‑ins create closed loops, no more wondering why a vendor is stuck, or why internal reviews are taking weeks.

6. Communicate Outcomes with Leadership

Often, vendor risk teams are under-recognized heroes. Share your progress and successes in a way leadership cares about: risk reduction, time saved, and avoided incidents.

Step 1: Use Dashboards and Executive Summaries
Visual charts of risk distribution, bottlenecks, and vendor completion trends help leadership quickly grasp performance.

Step 2: Quantify Time and Cost Savings
Show how automation and outsourcing have reduced manual labor, e.g., “We saved 250 internal hours per quarter, freeing up our team to focus on other risk management efforts.”

Step 3: Highlight Risk Avoided
Use examples: “A vendor flagged as high-risk had inadequate encryption practices; we escalated them, avoided a possible data breach, and retained sensitive data safety.”

Expert Perspective: Leaders want ROI and peace of mind. Your data-backed story paints you as a team champion worth celebrating.

7. Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Vendor environments, business priorities, and regulatory landscapes evolve, so should your vendor risk program.

Step 1: Implement Regular Technology Updates
Ensure your vendor risk platform is being updated with new AI models, questionnaire templates and integrations.

Step 2: Train Internal Users
Security analysts, procurement teams, and vendor managers all need to stay updated. Run quarterly training sessions or recorded walkthroughs to keep everyone sharp.

Step 3: Lean on Industry Benchmarks
Compare your vendor risk program metrics to peers. Are you faster? Lower risk score averages? Identify improvement areas and double down where needed.

Expert Perspective: When your team feels confident and your tools are modern, vendor risk management becomes a value-add, not a burden.

Conclusion

Vendor risk shouldn’t be a grind. By combining smart workflows, AI-driven automation, and expert-managed support, you can dramatically reduce burnout and increase impact.

To recap:

1. Map and centralize your process to eliminate chaos

2. Use AI to automate screening, scoring, and reminders

3. Outsource complex vendor outreach or deep-dive analysis

4. Design vendor-friendly, milestone-based assessments

5. Track real-world metrics and continuously optimize

6. Share your results in impactful executive reports

7. Cultivate a continuous improvement mindset across your team