A 50-person Singapore-based technology services firm had signed contracts with government entities and US customers that required SOC 2 certification by a hard deadline. Failure to certify meant breach of signed agreements, not a theoretical risk. But the compliance mandate was only half the story. The firm's leadership saw an opportunity to become a compliance automation provider to their own customer base, transforming a cost obligation into a revenue-enabling platform investment. They needed a vendor that could serve both purposes at once.
[ The Problem ]
Signed Contracts, Spreadsheet Controls, and a Deadline That Wouldn't Move
The firm was managing GRC entirely through spreadsheets and external consultants. That approach had already produced a concrete failure: a recent audit finding caused by human remediation error. The fragility of the manual model was no longer hypothetical.
At the same time, approximately 100 vendors required security reviews, inbound security questionnaires were consuming operational bandwidth with no automation in place, and overlapping control requirements across SOC 2 and ISO 27001 were being managed without any cross-framework mapping. The September 2026 SOC 2 Type II deadline was contractual, not aspirational. Missing it meant breach, not delay.
[ What they needed ]
Before selecting a platform, the team was attempting to manage compliance by:
- Tracking controls and evidence manually across spreadsheets
- Relying on external consultants for audit preparation and remediation
- Answering security questionnaires one at a time with no shared content or automation
- Managing ISO 27001 and SOC 2 requirements in parallel with no cross-framework mapping
- Conducting vendor security reviews for roughly 100 vendors without a structured workflow
- Scoping compliance separately for each business unit with no workspace segmentation
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over Sprinto, Drata won by combining technical architecture that Sprinto could not match with a partnership structure that transformed the purchase from a compliance cost into a platform investment.
Workspace segmentation was a structural requirement, not a preference: the firm needed to scope ISO 27001 and SOC 2 across different business units without cross-contaminating data. Sprinto could not deliver this architecture at the depth required for a multi-entity operation.
Cross-framework control mapping eliminated duplicated remediation work: managing ISO 27001 and SOC 2 in parallel on spreadsheets had already produced an audit finding. Drata's ability to map shared controls once and apply them across frameworks resolved the root cause of that failure.
The resell partnership reframed the pricing conversation entirely: Sprinto's lower annual price was the loudest signal in the evaluation. Introducing a channel partner structure shifted the question from which vendor costs less to which platform enables a new revenue stream, a comparison Sprinto was not positioned to win.
Audit ecosystem access accelerated the certification path: the introduction of a Drata Audit Alliance partner during the evaluation gave the team a concrete, credible route to ISO 27001 certification, not just a compliance platform. That combination of software and audit partner access was a differentiator Sprinto's offer did not include.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata's workspace segmentation directly addressed the firm's multi-business-unit structure, allowing ISO 27001 to be scoped organization-wide while SOC 2 Type II applied only to the web applications and smart buildings divisions. This eliminated what the team described as data dilution across different business units and tech stacks.
Cross-framework control mapping removed the duplicated remediation effort that had made the manual approach unsustainable. Controls shared across ISO 27001 and SOC 2 were mapped once and applied across both frameworks, replacing the spreadsheet-based approach that had already produced an audit finding.
Vendor Risk Management gave the team a structured workflow to process their backlog of approximately 100 vendor security reviews, replacing ad hoc manual outreach. Native integrations with their existing AWS, Azure, and GitHub environments meant the platform connected to their stack without custom development work.
An introduction to a Drata Audit Alliance partner provided a clear path to ISO 27001 certification support, giving the team an end-to-end compliance program rather than a point tool. The scope expanded on closing day to include nine products, reflecting the firm's intent to build their compliance reseller business on the full platform.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the firm's compliance program depended entirely on spreadsheets and external consultants, a model that had already produced a documented audit finding and could not scale to meet contractual deadlines across multiple frameworks and business units.
After, an automated platform with workspace segmentation, cross-framework control mapping, and vendor risk workflows replaced the manual approach, and a channel partner agreement positioned the firm to extend that capability to their own customers.
[ Business outcome ]
The firm entered a 24-month agreement covering nine products across GRC and vendor risk management, with a structured path to SOC 2 Type II certification before the September 2026 contractual deadline. The compliance program that had been running on spreadsheets and consultant relationships now operates on an automated platform with cross-framework control mapping, workspace segmentation, and vendor risk workflows in place.
The partnership structure converted the firm from a buyer into a channel partner, positioning them to extend compliance automation to their own customer base. What began as a cost obligation became a revenue-enabling investment thesis that reframed the entire commercial conversation. The audit partner introduction provided a credible certification path that the team could present to their government and enterprise customers as a scheduled deliverable, not an aspiration.