A large enterprise software company had spent years building its own compliance system. It worked, until the company grew past what a self-hosted, manually maintained platform could handle. Audit evidence collection had become a full-time drain on multiple IT team members, and the system could not scale across the integrations, frameworks, or auditor expectations the business now required. The answer was not a minor upgrade. It was a full replacement of the homegrown platform with an automated compliance program that could satisfy internal teams, external auditors, and a federated tool environment all at once.
[ The Problem ]
A Compliance System Built for Yesterday's Scale
The company's internal compliance tool had once been a point of pride. But as the organization grew, its limitations became impossible to ignore. Evidence collection still required manual data matching and Excel-based consolidation, and the system lacked the integrations needed to pull from cloud environments like AWS, Azure, and Entra ID without significant human effort.
The real cost was measured in people. The IT team was absorbing the equivalent of two to four full-time contributors just to prepare for annual audits. That capacity was unavailable for anything else. With Deloitte auditors expecting a more structured and defensible evidence trail, the status quo was no longer a viable operating model.
[ What they needed ]
The team needed to replace a fragile, manual compliance process with something built for enterprise scale.
- Replace a self-hosted homegrown GRC tool that could no longer meet enterprise audit demands
- Automate evidence collection across AWS, Azure, Entra ID, and GitHub
- Reduce the IT headcount absorbed by manual audit preparation
- Satisfy Deloitte auditor requirements with a more structured and defensible evidence model
- Coexist with existing tools already embedded in adjacent teams
- Support multiple compliance frameworks without rebuilding workflows from scratch
- Deliver a platform usable by team members who would not work in it daily
[ Why Drata won ]
The homegrown platform had reached its ceiling, and Drata was the only option that could prove enterprise-grade automation, auditor acceptance, and a credible coexistence story in a single evaluation cycle.
Out-of-box integrations closed the gap the incumbent could not: the homegrown system required manual data matching across AWS, Azure, Entra ID, and GitHub. Drata automated that evidence collection directly, which was the single most recoverable cost in the buyer's operating model.
Deloitte auditor validation was earned during the sales process, not promised after it: a live demo with the company's external auditors during the evaluation gave internal champions the external credibility needed to secure CIO and cross-functional alignment.
Coexistence, not displacement, made the decision viable: the audit team kept its existing platform and the security organization retained its identity tooling. Drata framed a federated architecture that let each team keep what worked while replacing only what had failed to scale.
Usability for non-daily users removed a recurring adoption objection: ease of use for team members outside the core compliance function was explicitly cited in the decision criteria, and Drata's interface addressed that concern in a way the self-hosted system never had.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata GRC replaced the homegrown system as the primary compliance automation platform for IT and security, bringing out-of-box integrations with AWS, Azure, Entra ID, and GitHub that eliminated the manual evidence-gathering steps consuming the most team capacity. Where the previous system required staff to match and consolidate data by hand, Drata automated collection and surfaced evidence in a format auditors could work with directly.
The evaluation included a structured proof-of-concept and executive demos, culminating in a live demonstration with the company's Deloitte audit team, which provided the external validation checkpoint the internal champions needed to secure broad organizational alignment. Drata TPRM addressed adjacent risk workflows, and the platform's workspace architecture offered a credible path to expansion across additional frameworks and business units as the company's compliance program matured.
Critically, Drata did not require the company to displace every existing tool. The audit team retained its existing platform, and the security organization kept its identity tooling. Drata won by proving it could deliver a better operating model for the IT and security compliance motion specifically, while coexisting with the broader tool environment rather than competing against it.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, two to four IT team members were effectively dedicated to manual audit evidence preparation, with no automated path to satisfy Deloitte's requirements at enterprise scale. After, evidence collection runs automatically across the company's core cloud and identity systems, and the team's capacity has been redirected to higher-value work.
[ Business outcome ]
With Drata in place, the company moved from a fragile, manually intensive compliance operation to an automated program capable of supporting enterprise audit cycles at scale. The two to four IT team members previously absorbed by audit evidence workflows were freed to redirect their capacity toward higher-value projects, a recoverable labor cost that had been the clearest financial driver behind the purchase decision.
Deloitte auditor acceptance, secured during the evaluation itself, removed a significant adoption risk and gave internal stakeholders confidence that the new platform would hold up under external scrutiny. The company now has a compliance foundation designed to grow, with workspace architecture and multi-framework support available as the program expands across additional business units and regulatory requirements.