Case Study: Diligent – From Friction to Flow: Modernising Diligent’s Procurement Platform

07 Apr

Posted by: Elian Simonini-Parker

Category: Case Studies

Procurement and technology professionals collaborating to modernise a procurement platform and streamline business processes.

Diligent is the AI leader in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) SaaS solutions, helping more than 1 million users and 700,000 board members to clarify risk and elevate governance.

Diligent engaged Barkers Procurement to help unlock the full value of its procurement platform and evolve an environment that was already live but no longer fully aligned to the organisation’s current scale and operating model.

As Diligent grew, its use of their platform expanded organically. While the system continued to support core operations, elements of the configuration reflected earlier business requirements, and newer platform capabilities had not yet been fully leveraged. This meant some processes required additional manual effort and aspects of the system were not delivering their full potential value.

Rather than undertaking a disruptive reimplementation, Barkers adopted a pragmatic, optimisation-led approach — enhancing and modernising the existing environment while maintaining business continuity. The programme focused on strengthening governance, standardising ways of working, and activating functionality that was available within the platform but not yet embedded.

The result was a more stable, scalable, and sustainable platform environment that better supports Diligent’s evolving operational needs.

Challenge

The platform had originally been implemented several years earlier and had successfully supported Diligent’s operations. However, as the organisation grew and requirements evolved, the original design no longer fully reflected current best practice or made full use of newer platform capabilities.

Configuration had developed over time to meet changing business needs, resulting in variations in setup and ways of working across the system.
System administration processes were not standardised, making ongoing management more complex than necessary.
Some AP and procurement activities remained manual where automation opportunities existed.
The platform required increasing effort to support enhancements or change, limiting agility.
Inconsistent configuration and workarounds reduced overall user confidence in reporting and data.

Diligent sought a partner to introduce greater structure, consistency, and automation into its current environment — ensuring long-term sustainability while protecting day-to-day operations.

Solution

Barkers brought deep industry experience to Diligent, helping stakeholders better understand the platform’s full capabilities and the outcomes it can deliver when optimised and effectively governed.

This was not simply a technical remediation exercise. Barkers worked closely with Diligent to reposition their procurement platform strategically, ensuring it was aligned to the wider organisation’s operating model and capable of supporting end-to-end finance and procurement processes in a scalable, sustainable way.

Key elements of the approach included:

A structured series of discovery and design workshops to align stakeholders on current-state challenges, future-state ambition, and practical delivery priorities.
Redesign and standardisation of the current configuration using proven patterns and best-practice design principles.
Automation of Accounts Payable processes, reducing manual effort, improving control, and accelerating processing times.
Simplification and rationalisation of existing configuration to remove technical debt and unnecessary complexity.
Standardisation of administrative workflows, dramatically improving maintainability, governance, and supportability.
A strong focus on knowledge transfer, upskilling, and capability building, including the creation of a shared knowledge base and a clear operating model for system administration.

Building on Diligent’s existing foundations, Barkers enhanced internal capability and confidence, ensuring the team completed the programme empowered, self-sufficient, and in full control of their platform environment.

Results

The project delivered immediate operational improvements and established a strong foundation for the future:

A stabilised and standardised platform environment that is significantly easier to manage and maintain.
Automated AP processes, reducing manual effort, processing time, and operational risk.
Consistent administrative standards, improving governance, supportability, and change control.
Improved system reliability and data confidence across finance and procurement teams.
A more scalable platform, ready to support future growth and additional functionality.
Reduced operational overhead and dependency on workarounds and manual processes.

Most importantly, Diligent now has a procurement platform that is fit for purpose today and positioned for the future—capable of evolving with the organisation, supporting new requirements, and continuing to deliver increasing value over time.

“Barkers were a fantastic partner in helping us modernise our procurement platform. Their deep platform knowledge and structured, practical approach helped realign the system to better reflect how our business has evolved over the years and ensure it now supports our current structure and needs.

They brought a highly experienced team who took the time to really understand our requirements and were genuinely invested in delivering the right outcomes for the business. The work delivered clear operational improvements and, just as importantly, left our internal teams confident in running and evolving the platform going forward.”

Rory Hynes, BSA Apps & Analytics, Diligent Corporation.

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Diligent – From Friction to Flow: Modernising Diligent’s Procurement Platform – Case Study

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Tags: Digital - Case Studies, Elian Simonini-Parker

Author: Elian Simonini-Parker