ZenGRC Reviews & Product Details

ZenGRC has provided my contract compliance team with its first ever compliance tool, which has been huge in collecting and retaining documentation for our quarterly compliance audits. With over 500 requirements our account team must comply with, Zen has allowed easier and more direct access to useful information for our business owners. As compliance is not always top of mind for them with their day to day work, the tasks feature has become very helpful in reminding them of our requirements without my team having to pester them with emails or follow up on every major requirement to ensure it is completed. Both sides have appreciated this!

The Reciprocity team has been helpful and easy to work with. Since our compliance audits are not any of the standard ones, we had to add multiple new categories of information when setting up our account. Reciprocity worked closely with us so the tool could work for our purposes, and this customization ability for a reasonable price was a major reason why our team chose to use ZenGRC. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Overall, the tool is not as flexible as I would prefer, but Reciprocity seems to be constantly working on updates. It is important to note that my team mostly works with the Audit Management section of ZenGRC; therefore, I do not care about Reciprocity's updates to the risk and threat sections (which currently seems to be going through the most changes).

Our compliance audit is not one of the standards--SOC, SOX, etc--so how the Compliance Objects (programs, standards, sections, objectives, controls) are set up in the tool creates a lot of redundancy. In order for us to complete an assessment of a requirement after it being tested, we need to have a control and cannot tie it directly to an objective. Additionally, we were able to create custom attributes relevant to our needs, but are unable to hide or remove the standard attributes that do not apply to us.

Regardless of the sections used, the tool has multiple ways of viewing information, which is good, but not all of them allow for column widths or the order of the columns to be changed for optimal viewing by the user. Additionally, the ability to filter and sort is not consistent between the audit view, objects list, and the to-do list, which can be frustrating. These features seem to be standard in most applications these days so I was disappointed with the limited flexibility. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The layout of ZenGRC is easy to navigate and to see where you stand status wise with tasks and requests. You can easily pinpoint areas that need more focus. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Trying to explain to our team the difference between the Tasks and the Audit Requests is a tiny bit confusing. But once I explain the difference, they are able to navigate their To Do items better. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I love best about ZenGRC is that there are multiple modules but at one fair price. The value for the software is huge since we are able to use it across multiple departments and integrate multiple processes. I selected and purchase this product twice (at two different companies). The seeded content was a life saver when implementing. And the data import functionality allowed us to rapidly bring in historical data to immediately see the value. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One area they can improve on is dashboards. I know they have made improvements but there is still some work needed. In general, I think the ability to get reports or data out of Zen is lacking. I would love to be able to export an audit report, rather than just the audit data in a spreadsheet. But I think they are making a lot of improvements. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ease of use and administration is well balanced with the functionality needed in a GRC tool. ZenGRC gets the job done without being overly complicated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

To meet our requirements, we initially deployed on-premises. However, soon after that, we found that software upgrades required too much IT involvement. Also, the technical specifications to continue to host on-premises did not align with our internal standards. We had to re-assessing our risk in storing sensitive information off-site. After performing more stringent due diligence of ZenGRC as a vendor, we migrated to ZenGRC cloud-hosted. Our preference would have been to remain on-premises with better upgrade automation that ZenGRC Administrators could perform within the user interface. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Flexibility. ZenGRC, while powerful out of the box, allows an organization to make extensive adjustments in how it builds out and maintains compliance programs. Extensive cross-mapping options, custom attributes, integration with a number of prominent ticketing systems are all present with more options on the product roadmap. This flexibility has allowed us to provide better insight into our risk program to senior management while also meeting the expectations of our auditors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

A number of integrations are not fully fleshed out yet and provide a minimum amount of functionality. Seeing these integrations develop into more functional tools is on the product roadmap, but it is a source of some frustration. Ideally, more of the integrations would be added to the ZenConnect suite. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Overview:

Our company got ISO 27001 certified in 2019 and our ISMS was managed through Google docs, spreadsheets, and some of it in Atlassian products. This worked fine but was not much scalable nor did we have a single source of truth to refer to. In addition, we started to prepare for a SOC 2 certification in 2021 and now wanted to map our controls against multiple compliance frameworks. We reviewed several tools mentioned in the 2020 Gartner report for GRC products and narrowed down to ZenGRC for several reasons: It's nimble and faster to adopt than products, and yet strikes a good balance between simplicity and feature coverage. As a SaaS platform, we see ZenGRC growing with us as we progress our compliance programs.

Onboarding experience:

This process was a very pleasant experience with a set of scheduled video calls and hands-on training on the product. There was plenty of time for open questions and in some sessions, a Reciprocity GRC expert joined to answer specific questions on frameworks and how to apply them in the tool. This added a lot of value.

In addition to the onboarding sessions, we got access to the Zen University, an e-learning platform with video courses covering all areas of the product. The course modules are easy to follow tutorials that encourage to use the product while watching to get the most out of it. These courses were a great way to prepare each onboarding video call and note questions.

We also have access to ZenGRC's online documentation which covered all our needs so far. There are tutorials on features and also tips and tricks on how to utilise the product most effectively.

Access to GRC experts:

As mentioned above in the onboarding experience, having access to GRC experts when we are stuck with a certain question adds a lot of value to the services provided. We not only have access to a platform to manage our compliance programs but can also resolve roadblocks through expert advice as.

Data import:

As with all GRC products, data import is an important aspect and the CSV import functionality ZenGRC offers works really well. I was able to pick it up within a very short time and important most of our data already during our onboarding phase. The importer supports copy & paste from a spreadsheet, import of a spreadsheet directly and has useful validation to avoid importing incorrect data.

Ideas portal:

After onboarding, we have been pointed to an ideas portal where Reciprocity customers can vote on existing product ideas submitted by other customers or submit their own. It's really useful to see what features other customers requested and upvote what's of most value for our organization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If you come from a very mature Google world, then ZenGRC's interfaces look a little basic in some areas. However, this doesn't really affect functionality or effectivity of the product.

The dashboard functionality served us well for now but could add a little more customizability. That being said, there have been improvements since we have adopted ZenGRC and there are more improvements on the roadmap. Also, we use Tableau and the native integration would solve all our needs for reporting should we ever need more.

The list view navigation and search sometimes require more clicks than necessary depending on what you are looking for. This has been raised in the ideas portal already and improvements are in the works. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZenGRC is very adaptable to fit our specific needs for managing our large contract. The fact that we can customize the program to work for us is the best feature in my opinion. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only change I would recommend would be the ability to change the standard naming convention. We use the term requirements or outcomes instead of objectives. Although this is a very minor dislike. We have been able to adapt without too many complaints from our business users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that all of the information I need for an audit is connected (mapped) to each other. By opening one control, I can see the objectives it covers, the test plans, the owner, the related policies, any associated risks, etc. It's SO MUCH better than trying to keep it all straight in a spreadsheet. I can take care of vendors, risks, audits.... all in the same pane of glass. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would like to see some improvements in queries/filters. Especially for the dashboards. I would love an option for "not assigned." For example, I want to create a dashboard for how many controls don't have any associated tasks. That can help me demonstrate how far along we are on a project. The dashboard section could use some more in depth documentation. Perhaps some more examples on how to get the most out of it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZenGRC is a great tool for my company as we do a lot of compliance frameworks so it's easier to track and map to. I like that I can cross-map to all the other frameworks and see what isn't mapped and need to improve on. Great to use to notified process owners about what evidence is needed and what previous evidence was submitted before. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can have some improvement be done on it to be more user friendly. We have some process owners that are not experience in Compliance framework and trying to navigate the tool. But once they understand where to go and what to look for it, is convenient for them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1. Versatility; it can meet a ton of use cases, and is extremely intuitive.

2. Integrations; ZenGRC easily plugs into common productivity tools like JIRA and Slack, which makes it easy to use across a distrusted organization.

3. Customer support; Zen has dedciated support and customer success managers that make it easy to deploy and get started. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If you are hard pressed to find a GRC solution that meet some very specific or niche requirements (ex. Article 30 reporting for GDPR), Zen may not hit all of your bases, but this is easily made up for by its low price, and general versatility for any framework. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZenGRC is able to help us manage all of our compliance activities from audits to vendor reviews. It is wonderful to be able to use the same tool for multiple use cases. The tool is easy to configure and fairly intuitive. It does not take long to understand how to set it up for your specific needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It would be nice if ZenGRC could help automate the vendor reviews by allowing us to configure the answers we want to see and having the tool flag those questions that don't meet our criteria, which are the ones we need to focus on. I would also like to see the export of the questionnaires in a little more readable format. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Right now for us, ZenGRC is a responsive vendor that is working very hard to provide a product that the customer wants. There is a great feedback loop that feeds constant innovation within the platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some areas are less mature than others. While there are many areas /foci within the tool, they are not all equally mature. It seems as though the audit preparedness / audit function side of the product is getting the most attention these days. Great for audit teams, less so for our use (VRM). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZenGRC allowed us to get our Compliance program up and running in relatively no time. The tool provides a centralized area for our compliance team to work and collaborate with others. It also integrates with Jira which allowed us to implement the work into our project management workflows.

ZenGRC is a powerful tool which can make your compliance team work more effectively which having a centralized place for audits, vendors, and risks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The permissions recently changed. This means some of our folks lost access, and we had to redefine roles within the platform. I think the new roles may be slightly misleading. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We had a couple of demos before going with ZenGRC. Particularly like the good user interface, making it simple to use yet a powerful tool! ZenGRC has helped us easily scale from managing 2 frameworks to 4 and counting. I was Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We were super excited for the Jira integration that came out of the box. However, this functionality is not fully developed and we still have to manually sync attachments from Jira to Zen. Having this fully functional will be a time saver for my team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As a SaaS application, It's easy to set up and use. Customer Support and Professional Services teams have been fantastic to work with. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No major complaints, our experience has been very good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1/ Customer on-boarding and experience

2/ Ability to link and map all we need from risks, controls, programs, ... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UI could be improved

Add more integration Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZenGRC consultants are very responsive and helpful. I like that they have a consultant that work closely with each account and give very detailed feedback. They have countless service and pricing is very reasonable. They have a lot of frameworks available so we don’t have to look elsewhere. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I think the interface could be more user friendly. When there’s more than 3 frameworks, the interface could get a little bit confusing to find the reverse mapping. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Zen is very user friendly and the support staff is superb. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only area I wish was easier was creating an audit. Also, it would be helpful to clone an already created audit. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Easy initial set up with already setup frameworks and mapping of controls. I can use it with very little configuration and workflow changes Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Reports could be more detailed and technical user friendly.

From user administration, there could be more options to restrict or grant access Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The tool is easy to navigate in and has a lot of flexibility to add custom attributes to each of the data types, particularly when using it as a system of record for compliance-related activities. The company is also really receptive to feedback as far as its features - they've incorporated a lot of the feedback provided. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are some features that aren't super robust - like role-based access controls, uploading multiple files to a record in bulk, and the general setup of the Jira integration. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ZenGRC has been a great tool for our organization. Onboarding was simple as there was great guidance by the Reciprocity team, Importing SOC 2 and ISO 27001 standards was seamless, creating requests (and repeating requests) has helped keep our team on track, and managing risks are vital parts of our compliance sector. ZenGRC has made these formally tricky but integral parts of our organization seamless. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The use of dashboards is something our organization utilizes across a multitude of applications and I don't find the compliance dashboard particularly useful for our purposes. That being said it does show what it needs to. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The flexibility to manage multiple compliance programs, audits and risk management needs Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The multiple mapping options can confuse the links between objects, controls, risks, and programs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love the fact that most things are automated and having a means to track when tasks get done, when vendor questionnaires or due diligence is done, and that I don't have to use spreadsheets nearly as often or at all! Between tasks on schedules that send emails when things are due, full history tracking of changes to our policies and processes, vendor questionnaires, having a functioning and easier to manage risk and vulnerability register, it just makes things much easier than having to track everything in files and directories and Office365 emails and tasks. I love that the staff imported our compliance programs with every section and objective, and then uploaded a Secure Controls Framework that we customized to match our company, and fulfill our compliance needs so seamlessly. Auditing functionality is amazing too as we can actually see where we stand in our programs and what needs to be done. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only downside I can think of is being the cost, for what we do, it cost about 4-5k a month. Though we do get excellent support and it's necessary being the only GRC employee at our company. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ZenGRC portal not only comes with a well-made application but great customer service as well. Our risk & compliance program is much more streamlined now that everything is accessible in one tool, and onboarding the team to the program is made simple through their online education system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It would be nice to have more customizability in the application. Not everyone wants to use the wording provided in the dropdowns in certain tabs. Having the ability to change dropdown text would be a great addition. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I can keep track of the requests for the audit in my To Do list, auditors can ask questions, get my response and have a conversation trail on the request utilizing comments. The commenting record creates a history and I do not need to hunt through my email. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would like the ability to rearrange the columns in my display. When the verifier stage is reached, we often have more than one person assigned. It would be nice to have the function to turn on letting each verifier select evidence acceptance before changing to Completed status. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.