I've recently started selling to midmarket and enterprise clients, and I'm surprised by how repetitive security reviews can be. They seem to ask for the same policies and control evidence, but always in different formats, whether it's a different spreadsheet, portal, or other method. This constant need to recreate the same materials is becoming a huge time sink for our team. Should I standardize our internal documentation and adapt it for each request, or is there a more efficient way to manage this without having to hire someone just to oversee audits?
6 Answers
Every customer has their unique requests; it can feel like "You can have it in .jpg or .jpeg or .jpe..." and just keeps changing. You’ll find a unique format for every client, so having internal standards is your best bet.
Once you dive into dealing with enterprises, every one of them will have their own set of forms and portals that rarely align. Trying to create a streamlined solution didn’t work for us; instead, we kept one central set of documents and adapted them for each client's request.
Getting certified, like with SOC 2, could really help. When clients ask for documentation, you can just point them to that certification, and most of them will be satisfied with it.
Exactly. While the SOC 2 report helps, companies still want you to fill in their own checkboxes to satisfy their internal compliance needs.
Do you have a standardized report like SOC II ready to go? If not, expect a bumpy ride dealing with these regulated clients.
Dealing with different regulatory perspectives isn’t going to change. This is your chance to create a one-page summary estimating the engineering hours spent on these requests. Use that info to justify hiring an analyst to handle these repetitive tasks, freeing up your engineers for more critical work.
We faced the same issue! Every enterprise wants their evidence in their way. We keep a master set of documents internally that's always current. For requests, we just tailor that for each client. It’s a grind, but it saves us from constantly reinventing the wheel. Keeping organized records and maybe setting up tracking for which client got which version helps too!
Totally agree! Tracking versions can help avoid duplication and repetition. It also makes reshaping for requests quicker.
And if you want to get fancy, lightweight tracking tools can help auto-fill common fields in their templates, which could save even more time!
That’s what we thought too, but even with SOC 2 certification, clients still expected us to provide detailed answers and fill out their specific forms.