I had dinner the other night with a couple of assessors. As we talked, they expressed their frustrations about their evidence submission process. Every time they go in to figure out the status of their clients’ submissions, they end up sinking hours into it. The glut of files waiting for them is impossible to manage quickly.
Not only does it cost the assessment firm money, it becomes harder to support clients adequately and lead them through the assessment on time and in one piece.
Chances are, your submission process is working against you, too, making it harder to lead your clients through an engagement. Instead of a smooth and easy ride, your clients venture with you through a swirling, massive cyclone of activity and chaos.
Most assessors just grit their teeth and power through it as quickly as they can. But when you’re heads-down and grinding it out on a daily basis, you could miss the clearer solution.
There’s a Problem with Your Submission Process
If you’re like most assessment firms, you have a dedicated drop spot for files that your client submits. You probably have a single drop location, or you’re using a file folder structure with subfolders for multiple requirements and certifications.
Throughout a compliance engagement, you could have 500+ files getting dumped in your lap—and most of them aren’t named in any way that makes sense to you. Now you’ve got a jumbled pile of hundreds of documents that you need to open and review, one at a time.
Every hour you spend cleaning up that drop zone is another hour of wasted time. Not only does it eat into your firm’s profitability, it sidelines you from your real work. You’re spending time associating files to requirements instead of simply evaluating them. You aren’t in control of the engagement, and that’s keeping you from giving your best to your clients.
You’ve got to guide them safely through the engagement by the deadline, but you can’t do that effectively if you’re chewing up time simply trying to understand the mess of files you’re dealing with. Despite your best efforts, you’re stuck in a swamp of submissions to claw out of.
What can you do?
Fixing a Broken Process
The issue is more than a minor annoyance. Your submission method is actively holding you back from a more successful, easygoing, streamlined client engagement.
Some firms address the issue by building slop time into their bids. They compensate for the extra time and effort an engagement could take by extending the timeline. That means charging more to the client—and risk losing business to other firms that charge less or have a streamlined process. It also doesn’t solve the real problem.
The solution isn’t building in slop time. Instead, if you simply streamline your submission method, the ship will right itself on its own. You’ll stop eating hours, client submissions will make sense, and you won’t endanger the success of your engagements.
On a reasonably complex certification (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI) TCT Portal can easily trim dozens of assessor hours out of every engagement, simply by automating the client submission process. Our compliance management software automatically maps every document to the proper requirement and tracks submission status in real time.
That means you spend zero time:
- Checking the status of what’s still outstanding from the client
- Sorting and organizing documents
- Deciphering file names
- Searching for documents the client swears were delivered
With TCT Portal compliance management software, you have a streamlined assessment process that eliminates a hundred or more assessor hours per engagement per year. Automation:
- Handles all the heavy lifting that you’ve been doing manually
- Consolidates all the compliance evidence into one location
- Streamlines the process
- Allows you to focus on providing expertise to your clients—not burning time needlessly.
TCT Portal empowers you to take control of compliance chaos and lead your client through the engagement journey without getting lost in the cyclone of submissions.
