In this Charles River Laboratories Case Study we discuss switching to a TPRM process automation & workflow management platform like ThirdPartyTrust with our customer, Thiago Ribeiro, Associate Director for Information Security Engineering.
Charles River Laboratories provides products and services to help expedite the discovery, early-stage development and safe manufacture of novel drugs and therapeutics. They operate 90 facilities in 20 countries, and manage 150 vendors per year. With ThirdPartyTrust, they managed to reduce their average assessment turnaround from 15 days to 2 days.
Download the full case study to discover more “before and after” numbers and use cases.
The Search for a TPRM Tool
When Thiago joined the company, there wasn’t a formal process to assess vendors. The team had a lot of Excel spreadsheets and it was just hard to keep track of everything. They thought, “there’s gotta be a company that does this for us!”. So they started the search process.
These were their main goals and challenges:
- Automate the long manual process for assessing third-parties
- Create simplicity and ease of use for enterprise users and vendors
- Empower the vendor ecosystem, so they can take control of their response process
After attending demos of three platforms, Thiago knew ThirdPartyTrust was the right choice. “The tool looks modern, very intuitive. That’s what caught our attention, because it was exactly what we needed: something that was easy to use not only for us but also from a customer perspective”, he explained.
The new process
The team at Charles River Laboratories now uses ThirdPartyTrust as their vendor risk assessment automation platform. By means of our API, their web intake form automatically sends an invite to the new vendor to connect on the platform. What’s more, the impact rate is automatically associated, so they can customize the following steps and save a lot of time.
“By the time a new assessment gets to one of my Engineers, they already know who the vendor is, who to contact, and everything is in the platform. A great part of their work is already done.”
Thiago Ribeiro, Associate Director for Information Security Engineering, Charles Rivers Laboratories
The improvements
Day to day operations changed tremendously, especially in the time it takes to complete and review questionnaires. Since ThirdPartyTrust offers built-in templates, the team is now able to analyze what questions apply or not in each case. With the ability to create tiers, they no longer have to guess which version of a SIG (Full, Custom, Lite) to send in each case, for example.
“Making sure every third-party has responded correctly is too time consuming, but the platform helps us focus on what really needs attention. Everything we’re gonna need is in our dashboard”, stated Thiago.
When it comes to customization, you can tell how flexible ThirdPartyTrust is by looking at the multiple use cases our customers have. For Charles River Laboratories, it’s not only assessing vendors, but also assessing partners for potential acquisitions. These partners were very welcoming of the tool and the new, streamlined process.
“I cannot thank the support team enough, they’re great. I would certainly recommend ThirdPartyTrust to a colleague, in fact I already did!”, concluded Thiago.
To learn more about how ThirdPartyTrust can help you streamline your TPRM program, request your free trial now:
