3 Key Takeaways from ICON plc’s Best-in-Class TPRM Program

ICON Plc recently received the award, “Best in Class Third Party Risk Management—Large Enterprise,” from GRC 20/20 to highlight its industry-leading third-party risk management (TPRM) program. As a clinical research organization, ICON must manage sensitive client data while operating a vendor network of over 5,000 suppliers—that means managing data privacy and procurement procedures for a variety of supplier types, predicting trends in vendor risk, and tracking risk data across many domains.  

Three takeaways from GRC 20/20’s report are: 

1. A strong TPRM platform helps you process more data with less effort 

ICON chose ProcessUnity as the platform to manage their program. This platform enabled them to create a centralized portal for suppliers to input data and make requests. Additionally, ProcessUnity offloaded the processes of distributing, scoping and chasing down responses for vendor assessments. This sped up the process for onboarding and assessing vendors, while response flagging alerted risk professionals to the responses that warranted attention. This platform has reduced procurement support tickets by over half and enabled more precise trend analyses so teams can target risk before it results in an event. 

2. Consolidated data promotes decisive action 

By implementing a centralized supplier management portal using ProcessUnity, ICON enabled faster, stronger purchasing decisions. Instead of wasting time chasing down key information or gathering evidence, ProcessUnity gave procurement instant access to the data they needed and even enabled lightning-fast reporting of critical information to clients, vendors and executive leadership. Additionally, this effort to centralize third-party relationship management has reduced duplicative processes across the organization and enabled faster, more decisive prioritization for risk mitigation activities. 

3. More efficient procurement means more success, faster. 

When an organization decreases the time it takes to onboard suppliers, report to executive leadership and address risk, that leaves it more time to speed up its business operations. By improving operational efficiency, ICON was able to win business faster, resulting in increased profitability. Additionally, faster procurement made the organization more agile in the face of acquisitions and growth. 

Interested in learning more about how ICON built its industry leading TPRM program? Check out this report from GRC 20/20 that breaks down the progress ICON made and the benefits they’ve seen since they’ve adopted ProcessUnity for Third-Pary Risk Management.