Building Trust On The Internet

The Compliance Software Buyer's Guide

Why building trust with customers is more important (and complicated) than ever before.

"Oh no. You've got another customer in the pipeline? Dang it!"

This is not a phrase you'd expect to hear in the B2B software world, is it? For cloud vendors and growing SaaS companies, growing customer adoption at an exponential rate is critical to long-term success. Yet, if you're the person who's stuck answering all those custom security questionnaires from prospective customers, asking to see SOC 2 reports, pen tests, and information about data handling, you might not be so excited every time your sales team comes to you with another "urgent request" to respond to a security review. But in today's world, where more and more business is conducted in the cloud, quickly and proactively building trust is more important than ever before.

SaaS growth isn't slowing down anytime soon
The overall spend per company on software-as-a-service products is up by 50%, compared to two years ago. The average company uses 137 unique SaaS applications on average.

Why is this? Well, in order to move quickly, organizations can’t build every back office, sales, marketing, and product experience and simultaneously build a highly differentiated product. To stay agile, competitive, and cost-effective, companies have become increasingly reliant on external tools to help manage their business and realize their goals. Do you need analysis on the customer journey? There's a SaaS product to do that! Do you need to automate emails to go out to customers with usage tips? There's a platform for that! Do you want to talk to your customers and prospects while they're on the website? Guess what? There's a SaaS tool for that! You see our point.

Vendor Risk Management is not an option
The DOJ's updated "Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs" guidance mentions third parties 33 times. If you aren't making sure your third party vendors are secure, you're putting your business at risk.

While buying solutions instead of building them can be a quick fix to fill a business need, it also opens the door to new risks. Simply picking a vendor to fill the gap is the easy part. Sorting through all of the available options, evaluating the capability and security of each vendor, and finding a vendor that is within your organization’s risk tolerances is difficult and time-consuming. As businesses share sensitive data and become more interconnected, the importance of establishing trust between customers and vendors grows. Whether you are a vendor trying to prove your trustworthiness in order to land and retain customers, or you’re a client looking to prove that the vendor you’re evaluating is as low-risk as possible, trust is more important than ever before.

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