Diligent is a company that created the modern governance movement as a leading governance, risk and compliance (GRC) SaaS company. Diligent serves 1 million users from over 25,000 customers around the globe. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Diligent AI President and CEO Brian Stafford to learn more about the company.
Brian Stafford’s Background
What is Brian Stafford’s background? Stafford said:
“My journey as an entrepreneur began when I founded and led CarOrder, a company that sold cars online during the dot com bubble. Within three years, I grew the company to 350 employees with $100 million in revenue. We eventually divested and shut down the business when the bubble burst and I enrolled at the University of Chicago to pursue a graduate degree in computer science. Later, I joined McKinsey & Co where I founded and led its growth-stage technology and SaaS practices.”
“While at McKinsey, I learned the power of good governance in driving financial performance, improving transparency and accountability, and benefiting all stakeholders — skills that ultimately helped me when joining Diligent in 2015.”
“In the nine years I’ve been at Diligent, I’ve helped the company transition from publicly traded to a private organization; successfully oversaw multiple acquisitions; experienced the highest growth rate in the company’s history; and, worked with our team to evolve Diligent from a single product software provider to a multi-product platform, assembling a suite of governance solutions. It has been an incredible ride!”
Core Products
What are Diligent’s core products and features? Stafford explained:
“The Diligent One Platform enables organizations to centralize their entire governance, risk and compliance (GRC) practice and elevate impactful insights to the C-Suite and board, all in one connected, secure view.”
“The platform is powered by artificial intelligence to help leaders amplify critical insights while working together across the organization, and is the only solution with continuous monitoring, analytics and automation built into its core so it can handle virtually any data set. On top and integrated into the platform are best-in-class solutions covering governance, audit, compliance, risk and ESG. Built-in reporting templates help eliminate guesswork, allowing organizations to focus on the data points that truly matter – making it easier to bring clarity to complex data sets, and helping identify, analyze, monitor and report on risks.”
“Think of it this way – currently most organizations around the world are teetering on a two-legged stool. Every organization has a CRM function and an ERP function, but not every organization has a well-defined GRC function. This GRC function is the crucial third leg that organizations need to survive. Integrated GRC is core to clarifying risk and elevating governance, providing insights needed to drive company performance and ensure operational health.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Stafford and the team faced in building the company? Stafford acknowledged:
“The rapid speed at which today’s businesses are expected to innovate and disrupt has accelerated. Whether it’s through digital transformation, adapting to market changes or reducing waste and costs, the expectations for companies to do more with less has become a consistent factor across all industries. This has shifted the types of questions and requests we get from customers and challenged us to innovate and adapt just as quickly to meet their evolving needs. Specifically, we have seen this challenge in the realm of AI. The rapid acceleration of AI has presented companies with unique opportunities for growth and innovation, but adversely has caused companies to fall behind in terms of adapting to the age of AI.”
“Another clear challenge is the evaluation of an organization’s performance being focused on financial metrics. In some cases, it is easier because financial data is simpler to identify and quantify. In others, it’s because sharing financial data makes it straightforward to compare the performance of different companies, organizations and industries. There’s also a strong pre-existing understanding of how finances relate to the strength of the company, and an inherent bias toward doing what is simple, clear, and already well understood.”
“The reality is that relying solely on financial metrics in assessing the well-being, potential and performance of an organization misses an increasingly important constellation of factors that contribute to a company’s long-term success. Now, we are starting to see the measurement of an organization’s performance expand to include non-financial metrics like climate, cybersecurity, diversity, ESG more broadly, stakeholder engagement, talent and compliance, to not only capture the current health of a business but also how it got there, where it is going, and how well it meets the non-financial goals of its stakeholders. This dialogue has started but I’d like to see it more widely adopted to create consistent language, reporting, disclosures and comparisons across businesses.”
Evolution Of Diligent AI’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Stafford noted:
“Diligent first entered the corporate governance space in the early 2000s but saw a surge in demand for its flagship Board Portal application when the iPad launched in 2010. When I joined the company as CEO in 2015, my job was two-fold: restructure the company and redefine the mission to reflect Diligent’s commitment to supporting board leaders facing increased scrutiny in the digital era.”
“As the business and technology landscape has evolved, our customer base has as well. Leaders are dealing with a risk landscape that is expanding at an accelerating rate — from an increasingly complex regulatory environment to sustainability risks, geopolitical risks and cyber threats. This is all mounting to a perfect storm that requires organizations to see around corners when it comes to the risks that are critical to both their success and potential failure. However, risk is complex and lives between disconnected data points and siloed systems in most organizations. To remedy this, companies need to take a unified approach to governance, risk and compliance (GRC).”
“Today, the Diligent One Platform seamlessly integrates board management with a comprehensive set of GRC applications to help organizations uncover the risks lurking in disconnected data sources and enhance governance with AI-driven efficiencies and reporting templates.”
“At Diligent, we believe it is necessary for company leaders to convert data into strategic intelligence in order to foresee and preempt risks. Diligent AI is a suite of artificial intelligence capabilities integrated within our Diligent One Platform aimed at transforming how organizations perceive, anticipate, and manage risks. Diligent AI equips users with tools to identify risks, secure data, and democratize decision-making processes.”
“Some of the key features include AI-driven insights into a company’s ESG focus and risk factors, enabling peer comparisons and industry trend identification, 24/7 assistance with board-related queries through an AI-powered virtual assistant, and enabling users to create, edit, and troubleshoot data integrations and analytics scripts in plain language.”
Recent Milestones
What have been some of Diligent’s recent milestones? Stafford cited:
“It’s been an extremely exciting year of product innovation at Diligent. Recently, we launched Board Reporting for Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), a first-of-its-kind board dashboard that gives leadership and the board a clear and holistic view of their organization’s risk posture. Board Reporting for ERM is just the latest among a suite of board reporting tools that includes board reporting for cyber risk, ESG, and audit.”
“We also recently announced an ERM dashboard driven by proprietary market intelligence data from Moody’s, which provides key insights on external risks like credit risk assessments, supplier performance risk scores, credit sentiment scores and a country risk index, in addition to internal risk data. The dashboard will be instrumental to CROs, CFOs, general counsel and other risk professionals who are looking to monitor critical risk factors and present a clear and comprehensive report to leadership and the board to drive informed decisions and long-term success for the organization.”
“We also have exciting new partnerships in the works to bring even more external systems into The Diligent One Platform. More to come on that very soon!”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Stafford affirmed:
“Our vision emphasizes modern governance as a strategic capability, and we are the only vendor to incorporate the boardroom into the GRC ecosystem. We serve over 700,000 board members and leaders, including 75% of the Fortune 500, 85% of the FTSE 100 and 85% of the ASX 200. Because of our customer base, we’re able to understand some of the biggest challenges facing the world’s leading organizations, allowing us to shape best practices and craft needed solutions. We have also developed such a breadth of coverage across company types and regions that we can advise our customers on how the GRC landscape will evolve for years to come.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? What’s next for Diligent? Stafford concluded:
“As a company with an insatiable appetite for growth, we will continue to have exciting product launches that will help boards and executives turn their data and insights into measurable and actionable outcomes, especially when it comes to managing risk. We are also continuously searching for and discovering ways to ethically incorporate AI into our solutions and processes, and we have a positive outlook on the future with constant innovation occurring in the industry.”
“As mentioned, we are also rolling out new ways to incorporate external data into our solutions through collaborative partnerships with like-minded organizations such as Moody’s.”
“Finally, we hosted the biggest GRC event of the year, Diligent’s fifth annual customer conference, Elevate. This year’s event was packed with sessions that helped risk and governance professionals stay ahead, covering the latest in AI applications, ethical compliance, board management, mission-driven governance and more. We were thrilled to host a lineup of remarkable speakers and sessions at Elevate this year. Personally, I really loved the session, “AI, the Board, and Corporate Governance”, where we explored how AI is transforming governance practices, as well as our highly anticipated guest keynote, Erin Brockovich – one of the most influential voices in activism and law. We were thrilled to connect with our customer base at Elevate, and offer an opportunity to learn from top experts, gain practical insights into the latest trends, and network with some of the industry’s top professionals.”
