A large travel company operating across global markets had a compliance program held together by a tool nobody wanted to renew and a team absorbing hours of manual work every week just to keep pace. With the incumbent contract expiring and a real risk of reverting to spreadsheets, the team needed a replacement that could handle multiple frameworks, flexible audit workflows, and a complex integration environment. They found it, and closed before the deadline.
[ The Problem ]
The compliance tool was creating more work than it eliminated.
The incumbent GRC platform had become a source of friction rather than a force multiplier. Workflows were overly complex, administrative tasks like removing users had become unsolvable problems, and support had deteriorated to the point where the team had lost confidence in the vendor entirely.
Meanwhile, three to four security questionnaires arrived every week, each requiring roughly an hour of manual effort to answer. Vendor risk tracking, evidence collection, and vulnerability-to-risk-register work were all handled by hand. The business consequence of staying was a regression to spreadsheet-based compliance across a global organization with obligations spanning multiple frameworks and privacy regimes.
[ What they needed ]
Before selecting a replacement, the team needed a platform that could:
- Replace a cumbersome incumbent before a hard contract expiry deadline
- Support ISO 27001, PCI, and NIST CSF within a single program
- Automate evidence collection across a complex cloud and security toolchain
- Handle security questionnaire volume without consuming analyst hours
- Provide configurable, non-linear audit workflows suited to a global organization
- Track vendor risk and link risk logging to defined risk appetite
- Integrate with existing infrastructure including AWS, Azure, Wiz, Qualys, Workday, and Jira
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over Vanta, Drata's configurable audit workflows directly resolved the constraint that had disqualified the competing platform in a prior evaluation.
Flexible audit workflows were the deciding criterion: Vanta had already been evaluated and rejected for imposing a rigid, linear audit flow. Drata's configurability was not a differentiator in the abstract; it was the specific answer to a documented failure mode the buyer had already experienced.
Integration breadth made the replacement case concrete: The buyer's environment spanned AWS, Azure, Wiz, Qualys, Workday, and Jira. Drata's coverage across that stack turned the platform switch from a theoretical preference into a practical, day-one operational improvement.
Partner reinforcement added credibility at the right moment: The managed service partner had direct knowledge of the buyer's environment and recommended Drata through the evaluation. That endorsement reduced perceived implementation risk at a point where the team had a hard deadline and limited tolerance for a second failed platform selection.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata GRC gave the team a single platform to manage ISO 27001, PCI, and NIST CSF without forcing each framework into a rigid, sequential audit process. Where the previous evaluation of a competing platform had stalled on exactly that constraint, Drata's configurable audit workflows matched how a globally distributed compliance team actually operates.
Drata TPRM replaced the manual vendor risk tracking process, giving the GRC manager a structured way to monitor third-party risk without rebuilding it in a spreadsheet each cycle. The breadth of native integrations across the team's existing stack, including cloud infrastructure, identity, ticketing, and security tooling, meant evidence collection could be automated rather than assembled by hand. The managed service partner reinforced the recommendation throughout the evaluation, adding confidence that the implementation path was credible and the platform would deliver on its configurability promise.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the compliance program depended on a platform the team had already decided to abandon, with manual processes filling every gap it left behind. After, multi-framework audit management is consolidated, evidence collection is automated, and the organization avoided the fallback scenario of rebuilding compliance operations in spreadsheets.
[ Business outcome ]
The team closed a replacement platform before the incumbent contract expired, eliminating the fallback risk of reverting to spreadsheet-based compliance operations. Multi-framework coverage across ISO 27001, PCI, and NIST CSF is now managed in a single environment, with audit workflows configured to reflect how the organization actually operates rather than how a vendor assumed it should.
Manual effort on security questionnaires and vendor risk tracking is now automated, freeing the GRC team to focus on program maturity rather than inbox management. The organization enters its next compliance cycle with a platform built for scale, not survival.