A large New Zealand enterprise had built its compliance operations around an incumbent GRC platform for years. The workflows were familiar, but the manual effort had become unsustainable, and the team knew it. When they went looking for a replacement, the challenge was not just finding better software. It was finding a vendor willing to help them unlearn years of embedded habits, absorb the cost of switching mid-contract, and prove the automation value was real before the ink dried.
[ The Problem ]
The compliance team was doing by hand what software was supposed to do for them.
Manual compliance work had become the team's default operating mode. The incumbent platform had shaped how the team thought about GRC, but it had not kept pace with what the team actually needed: meaningful automation across compliance and risk management workflows.
The cost of staying was not dramatic. It was cumulative. Every audit cycle, every control review, every risk assessment consumed time that better tooling should have reclaimed. The longer the team stayed on the incumbent, the more entrenched those inefficiencies became. With broader framework demands potentially on the horizon, the gap between current operations and future requirements was only going to widen.
[ What they needed ]
The team came into the evaluation with a clear mandate and a complicated transition problem to solve.
- Replace a long-standing incumbent without doubling up on contract costs
- Automate compliance workflows that had been handled manually for years
- Evaluate risk management capabilities alongside core compliance automation
- Validate technical fit through a hands-on proof of concept
- Secure alignment across security leadership, finance, and legal before committing
- Identify local customer references to build internal confidence in the switch
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over 6clicks, which could not match Drata's automation depth or the hands-on transition support that made switching from a years-long incumbent practical.
Automation was the anchor, and Drata made it measurable: the team's core pain was manual compliance work, and Drata's platform addressed that directly during the POC. The degree of automation Drata could deliver was explicitly cited as the critical part of the decision, not a secondary benefit.
POC support changed the evaluation dynamic: the buyer had years of embedded workflows shaped by the incumbent. Drata's team provided hands-on guidance throughout the proof of concept, helping the team reframe how compliance operations could work rather than simply comparing feature lists.
The contract buyout program removed the financial switching barrier: replacing an incumbent mid-contract creates real cost exposure. Drata's buyout mechanics offset that cost directly, turning a structural objection into a resolved commercial term rather than a reason to wait.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata's GRC platform addressed the team's core pain directly: the degree of compliance workflow automation it could deliver was the critical factor in the decision. Where the incumbent had required manual effort at nearly every step, Drata automated control monitoring, evidence collection, and audit readiness in a way the team could validate during a structured proof of concept.
TPRM capabilities extended the platform's value beyond audit automation, covering the risk management scope the team had flagged from the first conversation. The evaluation also surfaced real technical complexity, including integration challenges with the team's Microsoft 365 environment and questions about how controls mapped to internal documentation, and Drata's team worked through each issue rather than deferring it.
On the commercial side, a contract buyout program offset the cost of switching before the incumbent agreement expired, removing the financial barrier that would otherwise have delayed the decision by months. That combination of product capability, hands-on POC support, and transition economics made the switch practical, not just appealing.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the compliance team's capacity was consumed by manual work the incumbent platform was not automating, with no practical path to switch without absorbing significant transition costs.
After, automated workflows handle the operational load that previously required direct team effort, and the transition was structured to avoid dual-contract exposure entirely.
[ Business outcome ]
The team displaced a multi-year incumbent and moved onto a platform built around the automation they had been missing. Manual compliance effort that had defined the team's operating rhythm is now handled by Drata, freeing capacity for higher-value security and risk work.
The transition was structured to avoid dual-contract cost exposure, so the switch happened on the team's terms rather than the incumbent's renewal schedule. With broader framework requirements potentially coming into scope in the years ahead, the team now has a compliance foundation designed to scale, rather than one that will require another displacement cycle to meet future demands.