Diligent

Last Updated: 9th October 2024
Analyst Coverage: Alan Rodger

Diligent was founded as a technology company in 1994 and launched a successful software and services offering in 2003 that focused on corporate governance delivery. In parallel, long-established Canadian company ACL Analytics acquired the GRC SaaS solution vendor Rsam in 2019, and rebranded shortly afterwards to become Galvanize. Diligent acquired Galvanize in 2021, along with Steele (a provider of ethics and compliance solutions).

The company’s HQ is in New York City, and it has over 2,000 employees throughout its international office locations, which also include Canada, four European countries, South Africa, India, Singapore, and Australia. Its customer base includes 75% of the Fortune 500 and extends over 130 countries encompassing 26,000+ organisations in total. Its annual recurring revenues (ARR – totalling $582M in a recent FY) arise predominantly in the Americas (68%), with EMEA at 20%, and APAC at 12%. Diligent’s corporate governance solution set (‘Diligent Boards’) accounts for over 75% of ARR, with functionality relating to audit/risk the second-largest source (15%), with compliance and ethical/social governance (ESG) being lesser contributors.

Over 90% of customers engage with Diligent’s corporate governance capabilities, greatly outnumbering the 2,000+ that use its other solutions. Of those customers using Boards, Diligent states that many do not use a broader GRC solution, thus making cross-selling opportunities for Diligent with the audit, risk, compliance, and ESG capabilities of its acquired portfolio. All the legacy solution sets are being standardised and integrated into a vertical range of GRC functions, branded as Diligent One and sharing a common platform.

Company Info

Headquarters: 61 W 23rd Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10010, USA
Telephone: +1-212-741-8181

Diligent One

Last Updated: 9th October 2024
Mutable Award: Gold 2024

What is it?

The functional GRC elements which Diligent provides are: Board & Leadership Collaboration, Entity & Subsidiary Management, Diligent Market Intelligence, Enterprise Risk Management, IT Risk Management, IT Vendor Risk Management, IT Compliance, Internal Audit Management, ACL Analytics, and Internal Controls (which delivers continuous controls monitoring, CCM).

Fig 1 - Integrated GRC capabilities within Diligent One Platform

These elements are linked within the Diligent One Platform so that the same data and shared functionality underlies
role-appropriate views of the governance status, risk and compliance situation, and can contribute value across different areas (see Figure 1).

The Diligent One Platform is the foundation for all solution capabilities. It is based on AWS’s technology platform, from which the native infrastructure is used to provide data management, plus many integration features such as common security, and centralised management capabilities for identities/entitlements.

A primary capability of the platform is to enable data integration with any data sources that customers need to incorporate within GRC-related processes. Examples include general ledger, supply chain management, greenhouse gas emissions, HR management, sales commissions management, and sentiment analysis. Over 100 API-level native integrations will be supported, across leading vendor solutions, plus a variety of frameworks, template, content and data feeds.

A Developer Portal will enable clients and well-established partners to build functionality onto, and integrate with, the platform.

Customer Quotes

“Having the ability to streamline data collection, break down siloes and communication gaps and surface clear insights built on reliable, up-to-date risk data is invaluable.”
Simon Owen, Grafton Group plc

“As an audit professional, being able to understand and prioritize key risks that materially impact the organization is crucial… Having an aggregated view of risk, in a program that automates and streamlines tasks, is invaluable.”
Tom Keaton, Crown Castle

What does it do?

Diligent One replaces the legacy, pre-integration products from Diligent, Galvanize, and Steele:

Diligent Boards
The HighBond platform (with various GRC capabilities)
Steele’s Ethics and Compliance Platform.

Fig 2 - Package options for capabilities within Diligent One Platform

Three package options (Essentials; Professional; and Professional Plus) are marketed, each of which incorporates a range of the sets of capabilities within Diligent One (see Figure 2).

As common integration spans all the capabilities, additional choices from the functions available can be added to packaged options, without disrupting implementation technologically.

The development of Diligent One Platform from the company’s legacy solutions is ongoing at the time of writing, and likely to continue throughout 2025. As well as rationalisation and integration throughout, the company plans to incorporate new features extensively, including within the following areas:

Risk and strategy: Opportunity management, to analyse the positive side of risk; quantitative risk analysis; issue management across the platform; and native support for business continuity and disaster recovery requirements.
Audit and controls: risk/control self-assessment (RCSA); AI support for audit risk assessment and planning; QA of internal and external audits; support for certifications and compliance questionnaires.
Ethics and compliance: AI-supported regulatory change management; native third-party management, with enhanced questionnaire support and a vendor portal.
ESG and data intelligence: sustainability and carbon emissions benchmarking; climate-related scenario analysis; disclosure support for new regional ESG reporting requirements; support for boards wishing for transparency to investors and other stakeholders.
Board and leadership: additional information for analysis and reporting, including peer and industry insights, news, dashboards, and content, plus alerts and notifications; better information presentation including best-practice templates for board reporting (including highlighted liabilities), plus AI-assisted summarisation of insights and actions from board material.
Mobile-oriented user experiences, insights and facilities that are role-appropriate, for directors, executives, and risk/compliance practitioners.

Diligent has a significant number of respected partners across four types of commercial relationship (resellers and managed service providers; consulting firms and systems integrators; practice-adjacent technology that extends capabilities and value; and go-to-market alliances including AWS, Moody’s and NYSE).

The bottom line

Diligent is combining a wealth of risk, compliance, audit, ESG, and other capabilities that can link with its board-oriented heritage solution, to offer a singularly extensive range of GRC insight and value. It could reach quite quickly the position of having a fully capable and newly-modernised solution set, with advantages that are the preserve in usual circumstances of a start-up – and yet with a much more solid commercial position and prospect because of its established customer base.

Across the vertical stack of GRC practices that the solutions pertain to (and alongside its product and partnership investments), Diligent invests strongly in supporting and engaging customers via a choice of types of training and advisory content. Combined with in-person customer events, and support for directors to keep up with market changes, these should help to further boost customer value, as well as the cross-selling opportunities that Diligent can realise. We expect to see the company continue its long heritage in the ever-growing GRC market, with greater relevance and appeal than ever to a broader range of users within all types of organisation.

Mutable Award: Gold 2024

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Solutions

Diligent One

Research

Diligent One

Diligent One combines risk, compliance, audit, ESG, and other GRC capabilities, which link with board-oriented governance/operations to offer extensive GRC insight and value.

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