Exellor
Simplifying GRC Programs

As a global software services company, Exellor provides Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), Information Security (Infosec) and Cybersecurity managed services, implementation, advisory, and support for customers worldwide.

Headquartered in the Silicon Valley Bay Area, with a services branch in Bengaluru, India, Exellor has been providing GRC Technology services and staffing to customers since 2008. The company offers GRCaaS/ IRMaaS (Governance, Risk, and Compliance as a Service and Integrated Risk Management as a Service) by providing customers a one stop shop and a turnkey solution for all their GRC needs. The offering is GRC software, associated GRC services for achieving continuous compliance and monitoring, and a risk-based approach to managing business.

Exellor’s leadership consists of GRC industry veterans that have worked in senior leadership roles at Enterprise and Mid-market GRC SaaS companies and System Integrator Companies such as Infosys, Cognizant, etc. With a strong and experienced global team, Exellor provides 24x7 managed GRC services and support, and significant cost savings to its customers. The following is a conversation between CIO Applications and Vivek Thummala, CEO of Exellor, where we discuss about the GRC industry and his company’s expertise in addressing the challenges and opportunities for customers in the GRC industry.

What are the challenges that CIOs face today in the GRC space?

CIOs and CISOs are under increasing pressure to ensure cybersecurity of the corporate systems used across the organization. This is a huge responsibility as cybersecurity involves a multitude of areas, including data, systems, tools, people, and processes. As companies produce more data, the increasing number of state data regulations (such as the CCPA and cross-continent regulations such as the GDPR) require that organizations respect, protect, and abide by data privacy laws across states and countries. Given all these developments, the role of CIOs and CISOs are more crucial than ever before, and are now at the forefront of all boardroom discussions related to governance, compliance, privacy, risk, business continuity, vendor and audits. Implementing GRC is fairly complex and involves strong domain knowledge of controls, policies, workflows, regulations, vendors etc. and procuring a GRC system has its own challenges. Eventually even after implementing a GRC solution, resources have to be trained, retained and the solution needs to be adopted. In addition, the severe shortage of qualified GRC/ Cybersecurity resources limits the ability of organizations to implement, adopt and run a robust GRC program. Thus, increasing demands on security coupled with the complexity of implementing and running a GRC program and a severe skill shortage of qualified GRC resources is causing a perfect storm for CIO’s and CISO’s, with the result that many companies postpone GRC program decisions and continue to live with process debt (manual processes)

Exellor addresses these challenges by simplifying the implementation and ongoing management and maintenance of GRC functions by providing the software and the relevant GRC services.

Exellor provides a turnkey IRMaaS/GRCaaS managed service offering, which includes essential digital transformation of their current manual GRC processes and ongoing management, maintenance and support of routine GRC business processes. We automate by implementing a powerful, scalable GRC software for our customers and provide GRC Business Process Management (BPM) and ongoing management of routine/regular GRC tasks (such as vendor onboarding, vendor risk mmanagement, control effectiveness testing, compliance gap assessments, setup, and managing and maintaining risk registers). With these value-added services, CIOs and CISOs can be rest assured that they are meeting the organization's needs by having a comprehensive GRC program which covers all key requirements around Risk, Compliance, Vendor, Audit, Policy and Incident and the right resources to ensure ongoing management and maintenance of the software and continuous compliance activities to mitigate risks for the enterprise.

Exellor, in partnership with a powerful GRC SaaS software provider delivers automation solutions for all key GRC business processes and provides GRC resources (advisory and support) to manage the ongoing usage and maintenance. Organizations can entrust Exellor to achieve all their key GRC business needs, and not have to deal with the complexity of identifying, purchasing, managing, maintaining the software, and hiring and certifying resources to support GRC functions, all of which would increase Time To Value (TTV).

Organizations that adopt GRCaaS can thrive in an OpEx mode, realize higher ROI, ensure all their needs are met while having predictability of cost and deliverables. Exellor helps organizations by simplifying the process of implementing, managing and maintaining a comprehensive GRC program.

Please walk us through Exellor’s GRC solution based on its methodology, features, and benefits involved?

Exellor provides Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) software and the service to help organizations achieve their goals around Compliance, Audits, Risk, Policy, IT Risk/Security and Vendor Management. We help achieve Continuous Compliance with various regulations such as SOC1/SOC2, ISO, PCI, NIST, GDPR, FedRAMP, HIPAA, etc. by providing the GRC software automation and the advisory services to guide customers towards achieving compliance, managing Risk, Policy, Vendors and Incidents. Our flagship offerings - GRCaaS (Managed IRM/GRC) and GRC Business Process Management (BPM), provide focused resources to implement the GRC software and support routine GRC services such as conducting regular internal audits, setup and maintaining risk registers, vendor risk management, vendor onboarding/assessments etc. We evaluate customer GRC requirements and automate several manual processes, setup and maintain a single system of record (SOR), test controls, collect and store evidence, enable successful and timely internal audits, manage policies, do vendor assessments, build reports and more.

With a powerful combination of Software and Services all-in-one-solution, organizations benefit by seeing a significant increase in their Return on Investment (ROI), a decrease in Time to Value (TTV) through a reduction in implementation time, and resource cost efficiencies by eliminating the need to hire, train and retain resources on GRC software maintenance and support. Exellor has teams in the US and India that help with customer onboarding onto the GRC platform, setup and implementation, ongoing business process management, Level 1, 2, and 3 support. Exellor also has a large GRC advisory network to help customers throughout their GRC journey. Also, Exellor’s partnerships with various information security compliance companies provides a robust ecosystem of partners that can provide functionality such as penetration testing, subject matter expertise, training and external audit certifications. In short, Exellor delivers a one-stop- shop for organizations to experience a holistic GRC digital transformation to meet compliance and regulatory needs.

What are the key benefits that Exellor offers its clients?

We offer a variety of GRC services including GRC business process management, software implementation, support, training, ongoing management and maintenance, advisory services and a fully-managed service offering (GRCaaS). Services are geared towards ensuring customers achieve fast ROI, short Time to Value (TTV), efficiency through automation, lower costs, predictable budgets, global 24 X 7 operations, guided and led by a strong leadership team.

By leveraging our services, clients to free up internal resources to focus on strategic initiatives while we take care of all their GRC needs. We operate as a trusted partner for our clients and help achieve successful GRC outcomes for our customers.

We have partnerships with powerful GRC software to automate all manual processes and to setup a system of record for addressing all GRC use cases. This enables clients to achieve continuous compliance through automation, repeatable processes in the system, a fully implemented GRC solution, and managed GRC services.

Exellor's GRCaaS is particularly suitable for any enterprise, mid-market or SMB customer that has limited budget and team strength to setup and manage a GRC program. Such organizations are well served by choosing GRCaaS as a means to achieve all their GRC program goals in the fastest time in the most cost effective manner.

What differentiates Exellor from other vendors?

Competition in any industry is healthy, and it implies the existence of strong demand for the respective value-added services. Exellor’s key differentiators include a strong global presence with a 24x7 trained and certified GRC workforce, in US and India, that can provide continuous operations and business process management for our customers worldwide We have a strong resource base of advisory and technology consultants that have proven GRC credentials such as QSA (Qualified Security Auditors) ISA (Independent Security Auditors), DPO (Data Privacy Officers), CISA, CISSP along with certified technology consultants that can setup, manage and maintain a GRC software. Exellor can address any and all of our customers’ challenges, from setting up a GRC program to ongoing management of routine GRC business processes. We are particularly strong in North America, APAC, and MENA regions due to our global presence that further enables us to expand and serve in these emerging markets.

Another key differentiator is our vertical industry compliance accelerators that provide a fast track approach to achieving compliance in various industry segments such as healthcare, retail, pharma, etc. These accelerators reduce overall Time to Value for achieving successful GRC outcomes in the respective industries and enable our customers to accelerate their GRC journey.

Finally what sets us apart from our competition is our laser focused concentration of offerings and services catered to the Governance, Risk and Compliance domain and customers as opposed to GRC being one of the many services in a diluted portfolio. We live and breathe GRC.

What does the future hold for Exellor?

Our vision is to be the #1 GRC trusted GRC managed services provider worldwide, and our strategy and execution plans are aligned to achieve that vision.

Exellor is rapidly expanding in North America and APAC/ MENA/EMEA regions and is hiring/training resources to help customers in those regions. We continue to expand our breadth of GRC services and accelerators as we discover new use cases and maintain a high focus around providing GRC business process management/GRCaaS. We are rapidly expanding our ecosystem of technology value-added partners. We invite them to reach out to us to explore mutually beneficial partnership opportunities to provide more value-added offerings for our customers.