A large regional health system had outgrown its incumbent third-party risk platform and was ready to move on. But as the evaluation deepened, it became clear the real problem was not the vendor being replaced. It was the fragile, person-dependent GRC operation underneath it. Spreadsheet-driven risk processes, records scattered across disconnected tools, and a newly formed team with no redundancy meant that switching platforms was only half the answer. They needed a foundation that could hold.
[ The Problem ]
Critical compliance workflows lived in people's heads, not in systems.
The GRC team was new, and the processes that kept it running were manual, undocumented, and dependent on specific individuals. Vendor risk data was split across an incumbent platform and legacy SharePoint workflows, with no single source of truth. Questionnaires were tracked by hand, reminders were ad hoc, and leadership had no reliable view into risk posture.
The incumbent platform compounded the problem. The team had already given notice, but extracting historical data proved difficult. Limited export functionality and restricted access to questionnaire history made a clean transition feel genuinely risky. The cost of staying was high, but so was the cost of leaving without a better operating model in place.
[ What they needed ]
The team needed to accomplish several things at once, not sequentially.
- Exit a difficult incumbent platform without losing critical vendor history
- Centralize vendor records and risk data into a single, auditable system
- Automate recurring questionnaires and follow-up reminders
- Build a structured risk register that leadership could actually use
- Create a repeatable process for annual HIPAA assessments across distributed hospitals and clinics
- Reduce dependence on individual team members for process continuity
- Validate that any new platform could grow with a maturing GRC function
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over OneTrust, Drata won by making the near-term operating model more credible and immediately executable than a broader platform that would have taken far longer to operationalize.
Migration specificity converted a risk into a plan: presales work went to field-level mapping and import sequencing before the contract was signed, which directly addressed the buyer's fear that leaving the incumbent would mean losing critical historical data.
Honest gap acknowledgment built trust with a skeptical CISO: rather than overclaiming native parity with broader GRC suites, the team clearly separated what was strong today, what was workable through configuration, and what was on the roadmap. That transparency increased confidence rather than weakening the close.
Healthcare-specific solutioning addressed the real use case: the HIPAA assessment workflow across distributed hospitals and clinics was made operationally concrete, not left as a theoretical capability. That specificity mattered more than generic platform breadth.
Ease of use and time to value outweighed platform completeness: the buyer ultimately decided that faster operationalization and better short-term execution mattered more than waiting for an all-in-one suite that would have required a longer, more complex deployment.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata's TPRM gave the team a centralized vendor inventory with configurable fields, automated questionnaire workflows, and renewal-date tracking that replaced the manual follow-up cycle entirely. Drata's GRC module provided a structured risk register and compliance framework support, giving leadership the visibility into risk posture they had never had before.
The migration path off the incumbent was made concrete before the contract was signed. Presales work covered field-level mapping, vendor-profile import sequencing, and phased document upload, converting what had felt like a risky transition into a defined, executable plan. For HIPAA assessments across distributed facilities, the team modeled hospitals and clinics as vendor entities, using bulk import and questionnaire workflows to run structured annual reviews. Drata's Trust Center rounded out the package, reducing the manual burden of responding to inbound security diligence requests.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the GRC function ran on manual effort and individual knowledge, with no documented workflows, no centralized vendor data, and no reliable path for HIPAA assessments at scale. After, the team operates from a single system of record with automated questionnaire cycles, a structured risk register, and a repeatable assessment workflow that spans the full network of hospitals and clinics.
[ Business outcome ]
The health system closed a two-year agreement and began a structured migration off its incumbent platform with a defined timeline and agreed field mapping already in place. A GRC function that had operated on institutional memory and spreadsheets now has a documented, repeatable operating model built around automated workflows and centralized data.
Leadership gained a risk register and reporting structure that did not previously exist. The HIPAA assessment program, previously manual and inconsistently executed across facilities, now has a scalable workflow that can run across the full hospital and clinic network. The team is no longer one personnel change away from losing process continuity.