The Risk Wheelhouse

S5E8: 2025 ERM Vendor Compass - The New Enterprise Decision Layer

• Wheelhouse Advisors LLC • Season 5 • Episode 8

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Most ERM programs are still built to prove activity, not to produce decisions. In 2025, that gap is becoming visible at the board level, and it is getting punished. The new performance standard is measurable: time to decision and time to evidence. If your ERM platform runs on annual cycles and manual synthesis, you are not steering the enterprise, you are documenting the past.

In this episode, we unpack the 2025 IRM Navigator™ Vendor Compass for Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and explain why ERM must operate as the enterprise decision layer: operationalizing risk appetite into quantified thresholds, maintaining a living scenario portfolio, and reusing verified evidence from ORM, TRM, and GRC to trigger defensible, board-grade actions.

We walk through the IRM Navigator™ Model and place ERM at the Goals integration point, where strategic ambition becomes decision routines. Then we decode our Vendor Compass: two axes, solution coverage and level of integration, reveal which platforms can support executive decision cadence and unify evidence with provenance. You will also hear how to interpret tiers through a maturity lens, from Integrators (Archer, Diligent) to Accelerators (ServiceNow, Riskonnect, IBM OpenPages) to Pace Setters (LogicGate, Workiva).

We also introduce VC Sonar for ERM, a forward-looking scan of specialized signal providers and integration enablers that can materially shorten time to evidence and accelerate the path from extended toward autonomous IRM.

Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: which board decision is consistently slow because the evidence is still fragmented?



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Sam Jones:

So here's the thing about enterprise risk management tools. They're typically bought for one reason, usually compliance, maybe reporting completeness, you know, to satisfy an audit requirement or just to get through the annual risk process. But if you're a senior leader, you know the truth. These investments, they're ultimately judged by something completely different. Their direct, measurable impact on executive and board decisions. That really is the new market standard for success. The measure of value has um it has structurally shifted from the quality of your documentation to the quality of your decisions. Welcome to the deep dive, the executive audio series from Wheelhouse Advisors, where we translate these market shifts and vendor strategies into, well, practical, defensible implications for risk leaders. Today we are undertaking a critical deep dive into the 2025 IRM Navigator, Vendor Compass for Enterprise Risk Management, or ERM. The ERM market is going through a pretty significant reorganization really driven by accelerating risk volatility. Over the next half hour or so, you are going to learn three essential things that will directly influence your program road mapping for 2025 and beyond. First, we'll detail the two non-negotiable dimensions, solution coverage and level of integration that really define leadership in ERM platforms. And we'll talk about what the three vendor tiers, integrators, accelerators, and pace setters, imply for your organization's maturity. Second, we're going to provide a really practical breakdown of the four core ERM solution areas, everything from board risk oversight to enterprise legal risk that boards and executives must rigorously evaluate when they're selecting technology. And finally, we will leave you with a four-step playbook for using this vendor compass research to accelerate your ERM technology selection and your program road mapping in the next 30 to 90 days. Okay, so let's unpack this central idea. We all talk about enterprise risk management, but it feels like the modern definition is shifting dramatically. It's less about a static list, a risk register, and more about uh real-time evidence-based decision support. How should executives today really define modern ERM, especially in the context of this broader integrated risk management world?

Ori Wellington:

That's the perfect place to start. Modern ERM in that integrated ecosystem is really the strategic decision backbone of IRM. We position it as decision support and oversight, but at the enterprise scale. So you need to think of it not as a static repository, but more like the central nervous system that ensures your strategic execution is actually risk-adjusted. So it's the link.

Sam Jones:

It's the mechanism. It links your performance targets, your resilience expectations, your assurance confidence, and compliance exposure. It links all of that into a unified, accountable set of leadership decisions. And crucially, this system has to operate at the highest strategic level. Its job is to deliver discipline. It moves ERM beyond just cataloging risks and pushes it toward, you know, a scenario first governance of all that enterprise uncertainty.

Ori Wellington:

And when you say decision support, you mean more than just a dashboard, right?

Sam Jones:

Oh, much more. It means providing the actual evidence and the framework you need to make a definitive choice. And then critically having the traceability to prove why that choice was made.

Ori Wellington:

That shift from documentation to decision discipline really captures the pressure that risk leaders are under. So if ERM tools have historically been focused on that annual compliance report, what are the key forces driving this evolution right now? Why does this platform choice matter more today than ever?

Sam Jones:

The pressures are well, they're significant and they're compounding. And they are transforming ERM from what was a regulatory necessity into a real strategic differentiator. The first force is just the sheer acceleration of risk cycles. We are long past the era where ERM could comfortably rely on an annual cycle.

Ori Wellington:

Right. The world moves too fast for that.

Sam Jones:

Exactly. Risks, whether they're you know tech dependencies, geopolitical instability, or climate shocks in the supply chain, they converge and accelerate so much faster now. And this demands a decision cadence built on real-time signal analysis, on scenario discipline, and on threshold-based escalation.

Ori Wellington:

So if your process takes six months, then the risk has already happened.

Sam Jones:

You're reporting on history, not managing the future.

Ori Wellington:

And that second pressure point that flows directly from the C-suite and the board, doesn't it? Their expectations have changed a lot.

Sam Jones:

Absolutely. Board decision expectations have fundamentally matured. Boards and executives now expect ERM to answer three critical questions with verifiable, integrated evidence and often on very short notice.

Ori Wellington:

Okay, what are those three questions?

Sam Jones:

One, what exactly could change the trajectory of our enterprise objectives? Two, how quickly could this happen and how fast would we need to respond? And three, and this is really the test of operational readiness, what management actions are pre-authorized when specific quantified risk thresholds are breached?

Ori Wellington:

So not just what's the risk, but what do we do right now?

Sam Jones:

Precisely. And if your ERM program can't provide evidence-backed answers to those three questions, grounded in data from across the business, it's going to struggle for strategic credibility.

Ori Wellington:

You mentioned credibility. The report highlights two specific tests that a modern ERM program has to pass. Let's dig into those. Appetite operationalization and integration.

Sam Jones:

Right. Credibility test one, it's all about appetite operationalization. Risk avataz statements have traditionally existed as these broad qualitative governance artifacts. They were documents to satisfy an auditor. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Ori Wellington:

Vague statements like we have a low appetite for reputational risk.

Sam Jones:

Exactly. Which is functionally useless. Now, those statements must be translated into quantified, machine readable thresholds, clear escalation rules, and uh detailed scenario-based decision playbooks. Just think about the practical side of that. If your appetite statement says you have a moderate appetite for technology disruption, what does a manager on the ground do with that? Nothing.

Kelsey Hutchinson:

Right.

Sam Jones:

A successful ERM platform takes that statement and translates it into something like this. If the failure of a Tier 1 application affects more than 20% of customer transactions for longer than four hours, the incident owner is immediately authorized to invoke the Tier III recovery scenario, and the CEO must be notified within 30 minutes.

Ori Wellington:

That's the difference between governance rhetoric and measurable action.

Sam Jones:

That's the entire test. High performing programs use appetite not just to limit the downside, but to actively steer growth and investment trade-offs.

Ori Wellington:

And that brings us to the second test, which seems to be about tackling silos.

Sam Jones:

Credibility test two is simply integration. ERM cannot afford to be this detached, abstract, top-of-house model. For the outputs you present to the board to be credible, ERM must unify signals from operational reality.

Ori Wellington:

So it has to pull in data from other risk functions.

Sam Jones:

It has to. It needs to integrate real-time operational disruption signals from ORM, validated tech exposure signals from TRM, and the control evidence and assurance findings from your GRC function. This entire verified evidence chain has to inform those high-level strategic decisions.

Ori Wellington:

Yeah, and if it doesn't.

Sam Jones:

If your ERM platform operates in a silo, unconnected to the underlying facts of the business, its outputs are going to be dismissed. And rightly so, they'll just be seen as theoretical.

Ori Wellington:

So before we get into the vendor compass itself, we need to establish the lens that Wheelhouse Advisors uses for all this, the IRM navigator model. It's a framework that helps make sense of a pretty fragmented market. For executives who need a quick primer, how does this model organize enterprise risk?

Sam Jones:

We created the IRM navigator model to provide a clear, unified structure. It organizes the entire risk ecosystem around four core enterprise outcomes. We call them PRAC.

Kelsey Hutchinson:

PRAC.

Sam Jones:

Performance, resilience, assurance, and compliance. These are really the four non-negotiable objectives of any modern enterprise. And importantly, they aren't abstract goals. They're activated through four specific integration points in the business: goals, processes, assets, and policies.

Ori Wellington:

So the idea is to embed risk management where work actually happens.

Sam Jones:

Exactly. It ensures risk management is where decisions are made, where work is executed, and where value is created. For example, if you're managing risks around your IT stack, that's at the assets integration point. If you manage compliance obligations, that's at the policies integration point.

Ori Wellington:

Okay, so if IRM is about unifying those PRAC outcomes across those four points, where does enterprise risk management ERM actually sit in that structure and why is its placement so important?

Sam Jones:

ERM is the anchor at the goals integration point. This is the highest strategic layer of the model. The top of the pyramid. Right. And it's significant because the goals integration point represents the strategic engine of the enterprise. So ERM's primary job is converting strategic ambition, the company's vision and objectives, and the board-approved risk appetite into definitive decision boundaries and established executive routines. By sitting at that goals layer, ERM defines the enterprise direction. It sets the appetite boundaries, it frames the most consequential scenarios, and it ensures that all the technical and operational signals flowing up from the other segments, processes, assets, policies are all filtered, prioritized, and converted into timely executive and board actions.

Ori Wellington:

It provides the context for all that data.

Sam Jones:

It's the context engine.

Ori Wellington:

Let's make that more concrete. If ERM is the strategic engine, what kind of fuel does it consume? And what refined output does it produce for the board?

Sam Jones:

Great question. The inputs come from several critical sources. First and most important are the enterprise objectives and the risk appetite itself, which set the direction. Then it has to consume verified evidence from the other IRM domains.

Kelsey Hutchinson:

So ORM, TRM, and GRC.

Sam Jones:

Correct. ORM provides event, loss, and control effectiveness data. TRM provides exposure, dependency, and vulnerability signals from your tech assets. And GRC provides the essential assurance evidence, control testing results, and disclosure support.

Kelsey Hutchinson:

And the outputs.

Sam Jones:

The outputs are designed explicitly for the board and the C-suite. They include board grade risk posture dashboards that are tied directly to objectives, a curated scenario library with owners and triggers, explicit decision traceability for material risk acceptance, and critically unified executive reporting that translates all those cross-domain signals into quantifiable consequences.

Ori Wellington:

So concise, strategic, and defensible?

Sam Jones:

It has to be all three.

Ori Wellington:

So by operating at that goals integration point, ERM is directly responsible for activating those PRC outcomes. How does that translate into practical business language for a listener who isn't a full-time risk professional?

Sam Jones:

It connects those four dots for the entire organization. ERM drives better performance by ensuring your strategy is continually risk-adjusted against those tolerance boundaries. It strengthens resilience by formally defining the enterprise tolerances for disruption and ensuring escalation discipline is standardized. It enables assurance by building board confidence through transparent decision traceability and verifying control effectiveness. And finally, it informs compliance when legal and regulatory exposure rises to a material level, requiring explicit strategic decisions.

Ori Wellington:

And without ERM at that goals layer.

Sam Jones:

Without ERM anchoring the goals layer, those four objectives just operate independently. And that leads to the exact fragmentation that integrated risk management is designed to solve.

Ori Wellington:

This context brings us to the core of the research, the vendor compass itself. This is the strategic guidance for platform selection. So here's where it gets really important. Let's talk about how the compass evaluates the market. It uses two critical dimensions. We'll start with the vertical axis, solution coverage.

Sam Jones:

Okay. Solution coverage is an objective assessment of the breadth and uh the depth of a vendor's capabilities across the four core ERM solution areas we analyze: board risk oversight, corporate governance, strategic and emerging risk, and enterprise legal risks.

Ori Wellington:

Now, solution coverage can sound a bit like a feature checklist, but I know the compass focuses much more on functional maturity than just counting features. What are the key elements you're really emphasizing when you assess this dimension?

Sam Jones:

That's a really important distinction. We are not just checking if a vendor has a button-labeled risk register. We are checking if they support the decision cadence, the decision cadence, the rhythm and routine of how decisions are made. We emphasize core functions like rigorous scenario modeling discipline, the real operationalization of risk appetite, you know, translating it into those measurable thresholds, and the ability to produce defensible, auditable board reporting.

Ori Wellington:

So the goal of this axis is to measure how completely a platform supports that top-level decision making.

Sam Jones:

That's it. How well does it support the enterprise decision layer at the goals integration point? If the functionality doesn't facilitate an executive decision or create an audit artifact, it doesn't score highly here.

Ori Wellington:

Okay, now let's move to dimension two, the horizontal axis, level of integration. Given everything we've said about the pressures on ERM, this dimension feels like the ultimate test of a vendor's readiness for the future.

Sam Jones:

It is absolutely foundational. Level of integration defines a vendor's proven ability to extend ERM into that broader IRM ecosystem. And we measure this by their capacity to consume verified cross-domain signals from RMM, TRM, and GRC, and then translate them into decision-grade ERM outputs.

Ori Wellington:

Like what kind of outputs?

Sam Jones:

Things like automatically calculated thresholds, predefined escalation paths, unified board reporting that incorporates evidence from other systems without manual rework. And critically, we're looking beyond just simple data sharing. Integration now requires evidence reuse.

Ori Wellington:

Evidence reuse. What do you mean by that?

Sam Jones:

It means the source data has to retain its context and its assurance confidence as it moves up the stack. A strong integration score means the platform can effectively support a unified IRM architecture and eliminate all that redundant manual reporting across risk domains. The proof is in the practical, repeatable mechanisms for taking operational or technology data and turning it into a strategic, auditable conversation for the board.

Ori Wellington:

Understanding those two dimensions really helps us interpret the three vendor tiers the compass uses. You're clear that it's not a ranking, but more of a strategic fit analysis. Could you explain those tiers, integrators, accelerators, and pace setters, and what they imply for a buyer's maturity stage?

Sam Jones:

Absolutely. The tiers provide strategic guidance based on a buyer's specific needs and where they are on that IRM navigator curve. First, you have the integrators. These include mature platforms like Archer and Diligent. These platforms unify broad, deep ERM functionality with the strongest, most proven IRM integration capabilities.

Kelsey Hutchinson:

So who are they for?

Sam Jones:

They're typically the best fit for large, complex organizations that are already operating at the extended stage of maturity. This means they have multiple risk domains already established, and cross-domain evidence reuse and consistent enterprise decision routines are non-negotiable expectations from their board and regulators. They offer the deepest scalability.

Ori Wellington:

Okay, what's next?

Sam Jones:

Next we have the accelerators. This cluster includes vendors like ServiceNow, Risk Connect, and IBM OpenPages. They deliver substantial depth and innovation, often focusing on advanced workflow or specific cutting-edge areas within ERM.

Ori Wellington:

And they help organizations move up that maturity curve.

Sam Jones:

Exactly. They help enterprises progress strongly from what we call coordinated to embedded maturity. The thing for buyers to understand here is that while accelerators offer strong core capability, getting to full operationalization of the decision outputs, especially complex custom integrations, often requires some deliberate configuration and architecture design from the buyer. They provide the tools for integration, but the buyer has to bring the architectural discipline. Finally, the pace setters. Think of vendors like Logicate, End Contracts, and Workiva. These vendors offer highly targeted strengths, usually for very focused use cases or organizations running earlier stage programs, maybe at the foundational to coordinated stages.

Ori Wellington:

So speed to value.

Sam Jones:

Right. They provide fast, visible value, and an excellent user experience for specific tasks. But if a buyer expects enterprise level integration across all four ERM solution areas at once, they must approach the implementation with a very deliberate design strategy to ensure that clear, open paths for future integration exist. They excel at speed and defined workflows, but often for a narrower scope.

Ori Wellington:

That's a crucial distinction for anyone in procurement. So how should a chief risk officer or a general counsel actually read the vendor compass graphic when they see a vendor's placement? What should they infer from that?

Sam Jones:

You should infer strategy, not just feature completeness. The placement is strategic guidance. When you look at it, you have to ask yourself, is this platform addressing my most urgent pain point? Buyers should infer that vendors placed higher on that level of integration axis have practical, repeatable, tested mechanisms for ingesting cross-domain evidence and routing it immediately into board level decision reports. And that capability directly reduces the time to evidence and the time to decision.

Ori Wellington:

So the key takeaway is what?

Sam Jones:

The core message of the report is this the most effective ERM selections will strengthen your board level decision routines, that's the solution coverage access, while simultaneously reinforcing a unified IRM evidence model. That's the level of integration access. You have to ensure your platform does both, or you're just building another strategic silo at the top of the house.

Ori Wellington:

Let's focus now on the four critical solution areas that really define the scope of the modern ERM segment. These are the functional building blocks that executives need, and they're the basis of that solution coverage evaluation. Let's start with board risk oversight. What does platform support for this area actually entail, and why is this a non-negotiable for modern risk programs?

Sam Jones:

Board risk oversight is the platform capability that provides that executive and board level visibility into your risk posture. It's all about decision traceability and clarity. This area includes features like dedicated board grade dashboards, customizable risk appetite and threshold views, and formalized automated escalation workflows. And, you know, critically it's the mechanism for translating complex cross-domain signals, like a combination of high vulnerability findings from TRM and critical process dependencies from ORM into a concise high-impact story for non-technical stakeholders.

Ori Wellington:

It lets the CRO tell a coherent story backed by data.

Sam Jones:

Without spending weeks synthesizing reports, yes. A high maturity platform provides that evidence with push-button efficiency. A low maturity platform forces the CRO's team to spend 80% of their time on manual work.

Ori Wellington:

And why does having robust platform support here matter so much?

Sam Jones:

It matters because it directly supports the board's fiduciary responsibility and ensures clear follow-through on decisions. The outcomes we look for are reduction in time to escalate material breaches, consistency in board reporting cadence, and the guaranteed reuse of verified assurance evidence to back up those board narratives.

Ori Wellington:

Okay, next up is corporate governance. How does an ERM platform support robust governance structures?

Sam Jones:

Corporate governance capabilities ensure that ERM practices align precisely with enterprise expectations, particularly around accountability and delegated authority. So platform capabilities here include defining committee structures and charters, managing delegated authorities for risk acceptance, linking policies to material decisions, and providing mechanisms for clear accountabilities.

Ori Wellington:

The goal is an audit trail.

Sam Jones:

The ultimate goal is creating auditable artifacts for all oversight responsibilities. For instance, if the board approves a new risk acceptance, the platform should automatically generate the auditable record showing who was responsible, which committee approved it, and what compensating controls were put in place, all linked to the risk appetite.

Ori Wellington:

And the measurable benefits of getting that right inside the system.

Sam Jones:

You see substantial improvements in clarity, consistency, and velocity. The outcome signals are things like clear decision rights, a reduction in duplicate reporting, more timely committee materials, and a stronger link between risk oversight and strategic execution. It prevents risk analysis from existing in a vacuum.

Ori Wellington:

Moving to the more forward looking capabilities, let's talk about strategic and emerging risk. This is where the platform has to demonstrate its predictive value, often against risks that don't have a lot of historical.

Sam Jones:

Aaron Powell This is probably the most dynamic area right now. This capability is about proactively identifying risks that could fundamentally threaten enterprise objectives. Things like geopolitical shifts, AI regulation, or rapid tech obsolescence, and then translating that ambiguity into a scenario posture and defined actions.

Ori Wellington:

So it's more than just a list of potential risks.

Sam Jones:

Much more. A high maturity system doesn't just list geopolitical risk, it provides a portfolio of scenarios. Scenario A, localized supply chain shock, scenario B, global sanctions escalation, and each one is tied to specific KRIs, named owners, preauthorized actions, and a financial impact analysis.

Ori Wellington:

And why is strong platform support for this so vital for executives today?

Sam Jones:

Because it forces executive focus onto the consequential uncertainties that could radically shift the value of the enterprise rather than just managing long lists of historical risks. This capability requires the platform to facilitate frequent scenario refreshes, align them with current strategy, and critically assign clear owners and defined escalation triggers for every top scenario.

Ori Wellington:

Otherwise, they just become shelfware.

Sam Jones:

Expensive documents that collect dust until a crisis hits.

Ori Wellington:

Exactly. Finally, the fourth area, enterprise legal risk. This has often been a siloed function. The vendor compass explicitly integrates it into ERM. What does this cover and why is that integration so critical now?

Sam Jones:

Enterprise legal risk is about managing material legal exposures, significant contract obligations, and litigation-related risks that could rise to enterprise materiality and influence strategic outcomes or disclosures. This requires platforms to support enterprise-level legal risk taxonomies, provide visibility into legal matters where appropriate, and ensure decision traceability for risk acceptance when legal exposure shapes strategy.

Ori Wellington:

So it connects the legal world to the strategic world?

Sam Jones:

It has to. Think about managing third-party risks after an MA deal. A strong ERM platform integrates data from contract lifecycle management, identifies critical clauses like termination rights or indemnities, and translates them into quantifiable risk signals that feed the strategic risk dashboard.

Ori Wellington:

And what's the measurable consequence of getting that integration right?

Sam Jones:

The consequence is enhanced defensibility and faster action. Legal defensibility is a first-class requirement now. By integrating enterprise legal risk, organizations gain better visibility into material legal exposures, reduce the time it takes to surface legal issues to leadership, and ultimately achieve greater defensibility in their board reporting and disclosures. The ERM system has to support this continuous, traceable defensibility trail. You know, if we look at buyer behavior over the last year, what's really fascinating is that the evidence shows these clear, irreversible structural shifts in demand, and they validate the need for this decision-centric approach. We see four major trends redefining what success looks like.

Ori Wellington:

Let's start with that central idea again: the shift from passive reporting to active management.

Sam Jones:

Exactly. The first trend is a very pronounced aggressive focus on decision cadence over documentation. This is moving beyond just a concept. Buyers are actively demanding systems that institutionalize these continuous decision routines.

Ori Wellington:

So the metrics for success are changing.

Sam Jones:

Completely. They've shifted away from the volume of documents produced toward operational decision metrics, things like time to decision, time to escalate a material breach, and quantifying loss avoidance linked to timely intervention. If the platform doesn't make decision making faster and more accountable, it fails to deliver value.

Ori Wellington:

That operational speed means you can't rely on annual static models, which brings us to the second trend around scenario analysis.

Sam Jones:

That's right. Scenario discipline is now a board routine. Strategic volatility no longer allows for scenarios to be an annual exercise you file away. Boards now expect a dynamic scenario portfolio.

Ori Wellington:

Covering things like cyber physical risks or geopolitical disruption.

Sam Jones:

Yes, complex converging risks. And they expect that portfolio to be refreshed, reused, and actively stress tested as a decision instrument. This means the platform has to facilitate linkage. Scenarios have to stress strategic assumptions and link potential outcomes directly to actionable thresholds and mitigation trade-offs. It forces accountability. And it's because the consequences of fragmentation are so catastrophic. Demand has moved past simple APIs. Buyers require evidence reuse because ERM must absorb verified, assured operational and technology signals and translate them into unified decisioning that is both auditable and defensible. The system must know the provenance of the data.

Ori Wellington:

And we've seen some very painful high-profile examples of this recently.

Sam Jones:

We have.

Ori Wellington:

So these incidents were a stark reminder that fragmented risk data is a profound liability.

Sam Jones:

It's no longer just an inefficiency. ERM platforms must provide that unified view that connects the TRM signal, which is vulnerability, with the ORM signal, which is impact, to assess the comprehensive enterprise level impact and formulate a single decision posture for the board.

Ori Wellington:

So the pressure is on vendors to prove they can actually synthesize that data at the speed of a crisis.

Sam Jones:

Absolutely. The age of building a custom data lake to manually link risk systems is ending. And this focus on data velocity brings us to the final critical trend. AI with assurance great caution. AI is being adopted rapidly in ERM, mainly for sensing, simulation, and accelerating scenario refreshes and signal triage. But the market is approaching this with maturity. Buyers are demanding audible controls, clear provenance for AI-generated insights, and measurable performance improvements.

Kelsey Hutchinson:

Proof over promises.

Sam Jones:

Exactly. Proof over promises. Trustworthy AI support requires transparent evidence about the model and training data, and repeatable outcomes that ensure accountability remains with human decision makers. The AI can't operate in a governance black box.

Ori Wellington:

We've established what best-in-class ERM looks like today. It's integrated, it's scenario driven, it's focused on decision cadence. Now let's look ahead. The vendor compass includes a forward-looking section called VC Sonar. What's the purpose of this section?

Sam Jones:

VC Sonar is designed to surface highly specialized technology providers. So these are vendors outside our core index of the 50 most influential that are adding high fidelity signals and open integration paths to the IRM ecosystem. They're not full ERM suites, they are signal providers.

Ori Wellington:

So they're the enablers that help programs move up the maturity curve toward autonomous IRM.

Sam Jones:

Precisely. They help programs move from the extended stage toward autonomous, where manual synthesis is replaced by automated triggers.

Ori Wellington:

It sounds like they provide the missing ingredients to make ERM truly continuous. Let's touch on the categories, starting with enablers for board risk oversight.

Sam Jones:

For board risk oversight, the focus is on accelerating the time to executive awareness. A vendor like Datamender is an example. It provides real-time event intelligence detecting breaking risk signals from public data and routing alerts immediately into executive workflows. Another example is Domo, an executive analytics platform. It can take your KRIs and convert them into threshold-based exception detection. This shifts board reporting from a static snapshot, here's where we were last quarter, to continuous monitoring, alert. A material threshold was breached 48 hours ago.

Ori Wellington:

And for corporate governance.

Sam Jones:

Athenian is one focused on entity management. It makes your corporate structure and compliance obligations routable via APIs. We also see providers like SIARI, which specializes in corporate ownership intelligence for continuous monitoring of your risk profile.

Ori Wellington:

What about for strategic and emerging risk?

Sam Jones:

This is all about sensing external shifts. So you have Fiscal Note, a policy and regulatory intelligence platform. It uses real-time regulatory signals to trigger scenario refreshes. And then there's Factal, which provides verified, real-time incident intelligence with geolocation context, so you're acting on verified, not speculative information.

Ori Wellington:

And finally, enterprise legal risk. How do these emerging tools help here?

Sam Jones:

This is where we see legal documents moving from static data to measurable triggers. Ironclad, a contract lifecycle management platform, turns things like clause deviations or renewal windows into signals that activate risk workflows. Similarly, LinkSquares focuses on contract analytics, operationalizing critical contract terms as measurable signals that could be integrated into your workflows.

Ori Wellington:

So if we connect the dots on VC sonar, these providers are really a preview of how board-grade ERM is going to evolve.

Sam Jones:

That's right. It's about dashboards shifting from backward-looking reports to forward-looking threshold-driven exceptions. It's about accelerating decision cycles while simultaneously improving defensibility through traceable, verified artifacts. The movement to autonomous IRM is the systematic replacement of manual work with high-fidelity machine-readable signals.

Ori Wellington:

Okay, so after all of this detailed analysis, what does it all mean for the executive who needs to take action now? Let's give our listeners a practical four-step playbook for using this vendor compass research.

Sam Jones:

This needs to be a practical approach for any leader planning or reassessing their ERM roadmap. Step one, confirm the ERM program goal and the board decision use cases. You have to reframe ERM as a decision architecture, not a documentation exercise. Before you even look at platforms, isolate the critical decisions the board struggles to make without timely risk data.

Ori Wellington:

And then make sure your appetite statements are actually usable.

Sam Jones:

You have to confirm they can be unambiguously translated into measurable, actionable triggers. If your appetite statement is just a qualitative concept, your platform will fail to operationalize it, no matter which vendor you choose. Start with the decision, not the risk list.

Ori Wellington:

Okay, so once an executive understands their decision gaps, how do they translate that into prioritizing platform features?

Sam Jones:

That's step two. Map your current state gaps to the four ERM solution areas. You need a rapid, honest self-assessment. Prioritize your vendor shortlisting based on where your biggest gaps are. Is it board risk oversight? Because your board packs lack evidence. Is it corporate governance where accountability is diffuse? Do you need better strategic and emerging risk sensing? Or is there a huge gap in enterprise legal risk? Your priority gap defines which vendor capability you need to focus on.

Ori Wellington:

Which leads directly to the platform selection strategy itself. What guidance do you have for choosing the right tier, integrator, accelerator, or pace setter?

Sam Jones:

Step three is to choose a tier strategy based on your integration needs and your operating maturity. We strongly advise that large enterprises, especially those at extended maturity with existing investments in ORM and TRM, should favor the integrators for their proven scale and integration.

Kelsey Hutchinson:

And for SMEs.

Sam Jones:

SMEs should leverage accelerators for breadth or pace setters for targeted fast value needs. But regardless of your size, the critical architectural discipline is this. You must ensure your choice supports a clear, open path for future integration with the rest of your IRM ecosystem. The goal is unifying evidence, not building another silo.

Ori Wellington:

And once that strategic choice is made, what's the ultimate pressure test for vendors during the selection process?

Sam Jones:

Step four is to validate with proof points. That means integration evidence, workflow adoption, and measurable outcomes. Do not accept marketing claims integration potential. Demand cross-domain integration proof demonstrated through your use cases.

Ori Wellington:

So make them show you, don't just take their word for it.

Sam Jones:

It's exactly. Require the vendor to show evidence reuse. Not just that they can pull data, but that they can process and display traceable handoffs from RM, TRM, and GRC into the ERM board packs and appetite monitoring systems. And finally, your metric for success has to be based on decision cadence. Agree on and measure success by a quantifiable reduction in the time it takes to reach a strategic decision and the time it takes to gather the supporting evidence. If the new platform doesn't make your decisions faster or more defensible, the investment is not paying off.

Ori Wellington:

We have been diving deep into the 2025 IRM Navigator Vendor Compass for Enterprise Risk Management, analyzing the new demands for decision quality and evidence reuse in the strategic risk technology market. To reiterate our conclusion, ERM's strategic role in 2025 is to function as the enterprise decision layer. This layer has to translate risk appetite, dynamic scenarios, and critical cross-domain signals into board-grade decisions that advance performance while sustaining assurance and defensibility. This demands that risk leaders institutionalize decision cadence and unify evidence from their operational and technology domains immediately. We encourage you to use the Vendor Compass framework to benchmark your current ERM program and accelerate your strategic roadmapping. To access the full ERM Vendor Compass report, visit wheelhouseadvisors.com.

Sam Jones:

The path to integrated risk excellence begins with anchoring ERM firmly at the goals integration point. But remember this the ultimate enduring test of ERM maturity is whether it has measurably reduced the time to decision and the time to evidence across the entire integrated risk ecosystem. That is the new measure of value.