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Enterprise Risk Management & GRC RFP Template
Plan, evaluate, and select risk management software with a practical request for proposal template. Read all 112 requirement prompts on this page, or download the formatted PDF to share with your evaluation team.
112 editable requirement prompts
ERM and integrated GRC scope
Vendor demo scenarios
Weighted evaluation scorecard
Compare vendors fairly
Give every supplier the same questions, scenarios, evidence expectations, and scoring rules.
Create an audit trail
Document why the preferred solution best fits the organization’s priorities and constraints.
Explore the template
10 requirement sections, scoring rules, and demo scripts
Search the full requirement set, review the weighted scoring model, and copy the scenarios you want vendors to demonstrate. Nothing here is gated.
Read the full template
Every requirement, scoring rule, and demo scenario is available here—no email required.
10 sections · expand any section to read its requirements
- 1.Describe the business outcomes the organization should achieve through this procurement.
- 2.Describe the current risk and GRC operating model, maturity, pain points, and constraints.
- 3.Identify the business units, legal entities, regions, and user groups in the initial scope.
- 4.Identify future processes or entities that the solution may need to support.
- 5.Explain how risk information should support strategy, planning, performance, and decisions.
- 6.Define the expected improvements in data quality, timeliness, ownership, and reporting.
- 7.List applicable regulatory, policy, assurance, and records-management obligations.
- 8.State the expected number and types of administrators, contributors, approvers, and viewers.
- 9.Identify mandatory dates, dependencies, procurement policies, and approval gates.
- 10.Define measurable success criteria for implementation and the first 12 months of operation.
- 1.Describe how the solution supports enterprise, strategic, operational, project, and emerging risks.
- 2.Show how risks link to objectives, plans, processes, entities, assets, obligations, and performance.
- 3.Explain how risk taxonomies, categories, libraries, templates, and configurable metadata are governed.
- 4.Show inherent, current, residual, target, and forecast risk assessments using multiple methodologies.
- 5.Explain support for qualitative, quantitative, multi-factor, aggregate, and time-horizon assessments.
- 6.Show risk appetite and tolerance statements, thresholds, breaches, approvals, and escalation.
- 7.Demonstrate key risk indicators, data thresholds, trends, alerts, ownership, and commentary.
- 8.Show cause, event, consequence, control, and bow-tie analysis for a material risk.
- 9.Explain scenario analysis, stress testing, interdependencies, aggregation, and cascading impacts.
- 10.Show actions, treatments, acceptance, exceptions, due dates, dependencies, and effectiveness reviews.
- 11.Demonstrate risk voting, workshops, challenge, moderation, approvals, attestations, and audit history.
- 12.Show executive, board, committee, business-unit, and risk-owner views without offline manipulation.
- 1.Show how obligations are captured, interpreted, assigned, reviewed, and linked to accountable owners.
- 2.Explain how regulations, standards, contracts, policies, controls, evidence, risks, and issues connect.
- 3.Demonstrate framework and control-library import, mapping, crosswalks, versioning, and reuse.
- 4.Show applicability assessments, rationale, approvals, review dates, and change history.
- 5.Demonstrate policy authoring, review, approval, publication, distribution, attestation, and exceptions.
- 6.Show control design, ownership, frequency, evidence, operation, testing, and effectiveness status.
- 7.Explain regulatory-change intake, impact assessment, assignment, implementation, and reporting.
- 8.Show compliance assessments, certifications, questionnaires, evidence requests, and remediation.
- 9.Demonstrate issue, finding, breach, exception, waiver, action-plan, and closure workflows.
- 10.Explain how duplicate controls and evidence are reduced across regulations and frameworks.
- 11.Show compliance dashboards by entity, obligation, framework, owner, control, and status.
- 12.Describe content subscriptions, update cadence, licensing, provenance, and customer customization.
- 1.Show risk-based audit planning, universe management, scheduling, resourcing, and plan approval.
- 2.Demonstrate workpapers, test procedures, sampling, evidence, review notes, findings, and reports.
- 3.Explain combined-assurance mapping across management, compliance, risk, audit, and external assurance.
- 4.Show incident intake, classification, triage, investigation, root cause, loss, response, and closure.
- 5.Demonstrate confidential reporting, access restrictions, legal hold, and sensitive-case handling.
- 6.Show third-party inventory, segmentation, inherent risk, onboarding, due diligence, and approval.
- 7.Demonstrate questionnaires, evidence, scoring, screening, monitoring, reassessment, and offboarding.
- 8.Explain fourth-party, concentration, geographic, financial, cyber, ESG, and continuity risk support.
- 9.Show how incidents, losses, findings, vendors, controls, and enterprise risks are linked.
- 10.Demonstrate issues and actions consolidated across audit, compliance, risk, incidents, and vendors.
- 1.Show role-based home pages, assigned work, deadlines, alerts, recent changes, and priorities.
- 2.Demonstrate configurable workflows, stages, conditions, approvals, delegation, and escalation.
- 3.Explain what administrators can configure without vendor services or custom code.
- 4.Show bulk updates, imports, recurring tasks, reminders, and automated assignment.
- 5.Demonstrate comments, mentions, attachments, decisions, approvals, and complete audit history.
- 6.Show global search, saved views, filters, exports, subscriptions, and personalized dashboards.
- 7.Explain support for mobile, responsive, low-bandwidth, multilingual, and time-zone use.
- 8.Provide current accessibility conformance evidence and explain the remediation process.
- 9.Show safeguards for incomplete, duplicate, stale, contradictory, and low-quality data.
- 10.Explain embedded guidance, contextual help, release communications, and user feedback.
- 1.Show configurable dashboards, charts, heat maps, tables, drill-down, and role-based visibility.
- 2.Demonstrate scheduled and on-demand reports in web, PDF, spreadsheet, and presentation formats.
- 3.Show board-ready reporting with narrative, trends, appetite, actions, and material changes.
- 4.Explain calculations, data lineage, timestamps, filters, definitions, and reconciliation controls.
- 5.Show cross-entity aggregation, normalization, weighting, rollups, and double-counting safeguards.
- 6.Demonstrate trends, leading indicators, correlations, scenarios, and emerging-risk signals.
- 7.Explain self-service analytics, semantic models, data warehouse access, and BI integration.
- 8.Show report versioning, review, approval, distribution, confidentiality, and retention.
- 9.Describe AI-supported summaries, recommendations, transparency, citations, review, and opt-out.
- 10.Explain controls over AI training data, prompts, outputs, model providers, and customer information.
- 1.Describe the solution architecture, tenancy model, hosting regions, dependencies, and data flows.
- 2.List supported browsers, mobile platforms, identity providers, and technical prerequisites.
- 3.Demonstrate SSO, MFA, automated provisioning, deprovisioning, groups, and role mapping.
- 4.Describe REST or GraphQL APIs, webhooks, events, limits, authentication, versioning, and support.
- 5.List standard connectors for HR, ERP, CRM, ITSM, security, document, BI, and collaboration tools.
- 6.Explain batch, real-time, file, API, and event integration patterns and monitoring.
- 7.Show import validation, error handling, reconciliation, transformation, and repeatable migration.
- 8.Describe customer access to complete data, attachments, history, metadata, and configuration.
- 9.Explain master-data management for users, entities, assets, processes, controls, and vendors.
- 10.Describe sandbox, test, development, production, release, refresh, and promotion capabilities.
- 11.Explain performance, scale, capacity testing, geographic latency, and published service limits.
- 12.Describe exit assistance and the timing, format, completeness, and cost of data export.
- 1.Provide current independent security certifications, audit reports, scope, exceptions, and remediation.
- 2.Describe encryption in transit and at rest, key management, rotation, and customer-managed options.
- 3.Show granular authorization, segregation of duties, privileged access, and periodic access review.
- 4.Describe immutable security and activity logs, monitoring, retention, export, and SIEM integration.
- 5.Explain secure development, dependency management, code review, testing, and vulnerability disclosure.
- 6.Provide penetration-testing scope, frequency, independence, results-sharing, and remediation targets.
- 7.Describe incident detection, response, notification, investigation, evidence, and customer cooperation.
- 8.List subprocessors, processing locations, cross-border safeguards, and advance-change notification.
- 9.Explain data classification, minimization, retention, legal hold, deletion, backup, and media disposal.
- 10.Describe privacy-rights support, impact assessments, breach obligations, and controller/processor roles.
- 11.Provide availability commitments, redundancy, backups, recovery objectives, tests, and test evidence.
- 12.Describe business continuity, disaster recovery, service status, communications, and material incidents.
- 1.Provide a phased implementation plan with activities, deliverables, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
- 2.Identify vendor and customer roles, effort assumptions, governance, escalation, and decision rights.
- 3.Describe discovery, design, configuration, testing, validation, deployment, and stabilization.
- 4.Explain migration discovery, cleansing, mapping, trial loads, reconciliation, and sign-off.
- 5.Describe change-management, communications, stakeholder engagement, and adoption measurement.
- 6.Provide role-based training for administrators, specialists, owners, executives, and support teams.
- 7.Explain documentation, knowledge transfer, configuration records, and administrator self-sufficiency.
- 8.Describe implementation partners, subcontractors, qualifications, location, and accountability.
- 9.Provide support hours, channels, severity definitions, response targets, escalation, and service reviews.
- 10.Describe customer success, health checks, communities, product feedback, and executive sponsorship.
- 11.Explain release cadence, notice, testing, feature controls, deprecations, and regression management.
- 12.State the assumptions and events most likely to affect schedule, cost, quality, or adoption.
- 1.Provide company ownership, financial stability, relevant experience, and product investment information.
- 2.Describe product strategy, roadmap governance, customer influence, and recent delivery performance.
- 3.Provide three comparable customer references, including scope, size, industry, and implementation date.
- 4.Disclose material litigation, security incidents, service failures, acquisitions, or roadmap dependencies.
- 5.Provide pricing by subscription, user, module, environment, storage, integration, service, and support.
- 6.State minimum commitments, tiers, overages, annual increases, currencies, taxes, and renewal terms.
- 7.Provide implementation, migration, training, travel, partner, and optional-service costs.
- 8.Provide a three- and five-year total cost of ownership using the organization’s stated assumptions.
- 9.Identify all third-party licenses, content, connectors, or infrastructure not included in pricing.
- 10.Describe warranties, indemnities, liability, insurance, audit rights, and regulatory cooperation.
- 11.Explain suspension, termination, transition, data return, deletion certification, and exit charges.
- 12.State all exceptions to the proposed commercial, privacy, security, and contractual requirements.
Example category weights
Agree weights before proposals are opened. Mandatory requirements should be pass/fail or subject to an explicit risk-acceptance decision.
| Category | What to assess | Example weight |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise risk management | Risk taxonomy, registers, assessments, appetite, KRIs, controls, scenarios, bow-tie analysis, and board reporting. | 25% |
| Governance and compliance | Obligations, frameworks, policies, controls, evidence, attestations, testing, issues, and regulatory change. | 20% |
| Platform and user experience | Workflow configuration, search, dashboards, mobile access, notifications, accessibility, and administration. | 15% |
| Technology and security | Architecture, SSO, APIs, integrations, encryption, audit logs, resilience, privacy, and data portability. | 20% |
| Delivery and partnership | Implementation approach, migration, enablement, support model, roadmap, references, and total cost. | 20% |
Suggested 0–5 scale
- 0Not addressed
- No response or no relevant capability.
- 1Major gap
- Material customization, workaround, or risk; little evidence.
- 2Partially meets
- Important gaps or dependencies remain.
- 3Meets
- Requirement is met with credible evidence and acceptable configuration.
- 4Exceeds
- Strong capability creates relevant additional value.
- 5Exceptional
- Differentiated, proven capability with compelling evidence and low delivery risk.
Weighted score formula: (raw score ÷ 5) × requirement or category weight. Keep commercial scores transparent and complete a separate delivery-risk assessment. Moderate material differences between evaluators before final ranking.
Decision controls
- Conflict-of-interest declarations completed by evaluators.
- Mandatory requirements and disqualification rules agreed in advance.
- Clarifications and revised information distributed consistently.
- Scores supported by comments and traceable evidence.
- Demonstrations use common scenarios, data, timing, and attendees.
- Security, privacy, architecture, legal, and financial reviews completed.
- Reference checks validate implementation, adoption, support, and renewal experience.
- Total cost includes internal effort, implementation, integrations, growth, and exit.
- Key assumptions, exceptions, risks, mitigations, and approvals documented.
Scripted vendor demonstrations
Provide sample data in advance and require the vendor to operate the current product. Limit presentation slides, and ask who would perform each task in production.
Strategic risk
Create a strategic objective and linked risk; assess it; map causes, controls, consequences, appetite, KRIs, and treatment; produce a board view.
Compliance change
Add a new obligation; assess applicability; map reusable controls and evidence; assign a gap; approve remediation; show status and history.
Control issue
Record failed evidence or testing; create and escalate an issue; link impacted risks and obligations; complete action and verify closure.
Organization change
Move an entity or owner, delegate work, update permissions, and show how reporting history and future workflow behave.
Executive reporting
Build a current board report from live data, explain material movement, drill to source evidence, and distribute an approved version.
Administration
Add a field, change a workflow, configure a notification, import records, update a dashboard, and promote the change without custom code.
Demonstration scoring prompts
- Did the solution complete the scenario end to end in the product?
- Was the workflow clear for occasional users and executives?
- Could administrators make the required change without custom code?
- Was source data, history, rationale, ownership, and evidence traceable?
- Did the solution expose limitations and error states clearly?
- Were reporting outputs decision-ready without offline rework?
- Were configuration, dependencies, services, licenses, and costs disclosed?
- Did the vendor answer the scenario rather than redirect to roadmap or presentation slides?
Requirement response format
Ask every vendor to answer each requirement with one code plus supporting detail.
- SStandard
- Available in the current generally available product without additional configuration.
- CConfigurable
- Available through supported configuration; explain effort, ownership, upgrade impact, and cost.
- XExtension
- Requires custom code, partner work, third-party product, or integration; explain all dependencies.
- RRoadmap
- Not generally available; provide committed release, contractual status, and interim approach.
- NNot available
- State the gap clearly; describe any workaround and its risk.
Required detail for every response: Response code, Explanation, Evidence or product location, Dependencies, Implementation effort, Ongoing administration, Limitations, Roadmap status, Separate cost.
Procurement timetable
- 1.RFP issuedConfirm distribution list, portal access, and contact rules.
- 2.Vendor questions dueSingle intake channel; no direct approaches to evaluators.
- 3.Answers distributedPublish all answers to every vendor at the same time.
- 4.Proposal deadlineState format, page limits, and late-submission treatment.
- 5.Evaluation and clarificationRecord scores and clarification requests in writing.
- 6.Scripted demonstrationsSame scenarios, data, timing, and attendees for each vendor.
- 7.Security and commercial diligenceInvolve security, privacy, legal, and finance reviewers.
- 8.Reference checksSpeak to comparable customers, including a recent implementation.
- 9.Selection and approvalModerate scores and document the decision rationale.
- 10.Contract and implementation startConfirm scope, milestones, and acceptance criteria.
Before contract signature
- Final scope, users, modules, environments, storage, integrations, and service levels are defined.
- Configuration and implementation assumptions match the demonstrated solution.
- Migration scope, data quality responsibilities, reconciliation, and acceptance criteria are agreed.
- Security, privacy, records, accessibility, resilience, and regulatory requirements are contractual.
- Named subprocessors, hosting and support locations, and data-transfer terms are approved.
- Pricing schedule covers growth, renewals, indexation, overages, services, and third parties.
- Implementation governance, resources, milestones, dependencies, and escalation are documented.
- Training, change management, administrator enablement, and adoption measures are funded.
- Product commitments and roadmap dependencies are enforceable or excluded from scoring.
- Data ownership, export, transition support, deletion, and exit costs are clear.
- Reference, financial, legal, insurance, security, and sanctions diligence is complete.
- Decision record explains the selected vendor, trade-offs, risks, mitigations, and approvals.
What is included
A complete starting point—not a generic feature checklist
The template is designed for risk, compliance, procurement, IT, security, and executive stakeholders evaluating an ERM platform or a broader integrated GRC solution.
Read the ERM software buyer's guideBusiness context, objectives, scope, and target outcomes
ERM, compliance, audit, incident, third-party, and ESG requirements
Security, privacy, data residency, accessibility, and integration questions
Implementation, migration, training, support, and service-level requirements
Vendor experience, customer references, pricing, and contract questions
Weighted scoring model, demonstration script, and selection checklist
RFP process
How to use the GRC RFP template
- 1
Align
Confirm business outcomes, scope, decision rights, budget assumptions, risks, and target dates.
- 2
Prioritize
Assign requirement priority and category weights before reviewing any vendor responses.
- 3
Issue
Give every vendor the same instructions, data, questions, timetable, and clarification process.
- 4
Validate
Test claims through evidence, scripted demonstrations, references, security review, and commercial diligence.
- 5
Decide
Moderate scores, document assumptions and trade-offs, and complete contractual due diligence.
Better buying decisions
Avoid the common RFP traps
Do not copy every possible feature
Long checklists reward vendors that answer “yes.” Focus on outcomes, critical workflows, and evidence that exposes meaningful differences.
Do not skip usability testing
Include risk owners, executives, and occasional users—not only administrators. Adoption is a core requirement, not a cosmetic preference.
Do not score license price alone
Compare implementation, migration, configuration, support, internal effort, expected adoption, and exit costs across a realistic term.
Frequently asked questions
What is a GRC RFP?
A governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) request for proposal is a structured document used to explain an organization’s needs and compare software vendors consistently. It normally covers business outcomes, functional requirements, security and integration needs, implementation, support, pricing, and evaluation rules.
What should an enterprise risk management software RFP include?
An ERM software RFP should define the organization’s objectives and operating model, then test risk identification, assessment, appetite, controls, indicators, scenarios, reporting, workflows, integrations, security, implementation, support, and pricing. It should also include realistic use cases and a weighted scoring model.
How should GRC software vendors be scored?
Use a documented scale, such as 0 to 5, and multiply each score by an agreed category weight. Score mandatory requirements separately from differentiators, require evidence for vendor claims, and use the same scripted scenarios for every demonstration. Include total cost and implementation risk in the final decision.
How long should a GRC RFP be?
There is no universal length. A focused RFP that prioritizes outcomes and critical use cases is more useful than a large generic checklist. Provide enough detail for vendors to propose a credible solution, but avoid hundreds of low-value yes-or-no questions that do not distinguish between products.
Can this template be used for ERM-only procurement?
Yes. Keep the enterprise risk management, platform, technology, implementation, and commercial sections, then remove compliance or assurance requirements that are outside scope. Adjust the evaluation weights before issuing the RFP.
Do I have to give my email to read the template?
No. The full requirement set, scoring model, demonstration script, and selection checklist can be read and searched on this page. A work email is only required for the formatted PDF copy that many teams circulate internally.
This resource is provided for general informational purposes. It does not replace your organization’s procurement, legal, cybersecurity, privacy, accessibility, records-management, or financial review.
Build a more useful ERM or GRC RFP
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