For Advisory Firms

Consultant Challenges

Advisory firms conducting vendor assessments, due diligence, or compliance reviews for clients face a fundamental tension: each client engagement requires customized questionnaires, workflows, and deliverables, but building custom solutions for each project is uneconomical. Off-the-shelf platforms designed for corporate procurement or vendor risk management don’t match the consultancy business model.

The result: many sophisticated advisory firms operate with a combination of spreadsheets, Word documents, SharePoint sites, and custom scripts that get rebuilt for each major engagement. This approach incurs costs: knowledge doesn’t accumulate, junior staff reinvent processes, and client deliverables lack consistency.

Why Existing Platforms Don’t Work for Consultancies

They’re Built for End Users, Not Service Providers

Vendor risk platforms assume you’re assessing vendors for your own organisation. Consultancies assess vendors on behalf of clients, requiring:

  • Multi-client data isolation within one deployment
  • White-label capabilities for client-facing deliverables
  • Workflow customisation per client engagement
  • Ability to build proprietary reference databases from client work

Most platforms can’t separate “our data” from “client A’s data” from “client B’s data” without deploying separate instances, destroying economies of scale.

Lack of Flexibility

Corporate platforms have fixed workflows: vendor onboarding, risk assessment, periodic review. Consultancies need different workflows for different engagements:

  • M&A due diligence with legal review gates
  • Regulatory compliance with multi-tier approval
  • Vendor selection with technical scoring and contract negotiation
  • Ongoing monitoring with exception-based escalation

Those TPRM vendors who do offer workflow customisisation generally required week or months to implement requirements, relying on paid professional consulting.

They Don’t Solve the Knowledge Accumulation Problem

After conducting 50 vendor security assessments, your firm should have institutional knowledge about those 50 vendors. Most platforms treat each assessment as a discrete project—once closed, the data is archived. You can’t easily build a “vendor intelligence database” that compounds in value over time.

What Fluvial Provides

1. Multi-Client Architecture from Day One

The platform was originally deployed at global banks managing thousands of suppliers across dozens of business units. Multi-tenancy isn’t an add-on; it’s foundational. Each client engagement operates as an isolated project with separate:

  • User permissions (client stakeholders see their data only)
  • Workflow configurations (client-specific approval processes)
  • Document templates (client branding and formatting)
  • Data exports (client owns their data completely)

But you operate one deployment, with cross-client analytics, shared templates, and centralised administration.

2. Workflow Customisation Without Professional Services

Client A requires legal review before any vendor is approved. Client B needs technical committee sign-off above certain risk thresholds. Client C wants automatic escalation if responses aren’t received within 10 days.

Fluvial uses CEL (Common Expression Language) policies that you write and modify without vendor involvement:

// Client A: Legal approval required
transition.to == 'approved' and approvals.legal.count >= 1

// Client B: Committee for high risk
risk_score > 75 and approvals.any(role == 'technical_committee')

// Client C: Escalation timing
days_since(request_sent) > 10 and status == 'pending'

You control the business logic. Your team writes the rules. No waiting for vendor customisation.

3. Assessment Capabilities That Scale

The core questionnaire engine was proven over 20 years at 28 of 30 largest banks, major airlines, and hotel chains. It provides capabilities that consumer survey tools don’t:

Multiple Scoring Perspectives - Your technical team scores for capability, finance scores for cost structure, legal scores for compliance risk—same questionnaire, different evaluation lenses.

Hierarchical Weighting - Sections and subsections carry independent weights that compound through the structure, enabling multi-dimensional evaluation frameworks.

Fine-Grained Permissions - Client stakeholders see only the sections relevant to their role; your team controls the complete assessment.

Multi-Party Collaboration - Vendors respond, your analysts review, subject matter experts validate, client executives approve—each role sees appropriate views and actions.

These aren’t features you’ll use someday; they’re capabilities that assessments require on day one.

4. Document Automation for Knowledge Accumulation

After conducting vendor security assessments for five clients, your firm has evaluated 100 vendors. That knowledge should be an asset, not archived PDFs.

Fluvial’s document automation system treats vendor profiles, compliance reports, and rating documents as structured data:

Persistent Vendor Profiles - Questionnaire responses populate vendor profile documents (JSON Schema-based) that serve as reference data across engagements.

Accumulating Intelligence - Each new assessment of a vendor updates their profile while preserving complete audit trails of what changed when.

Cross-Engagement Analytics - Compare vendor performance across clients, identify trends in vendor capabilities, analyze risk profiles across your portfolio.

Client Deliverable Generation - Questionnaire data populates client-specific reports, rating documents, and contract schedules through configurable mappings.

Over time, you build a proprietary vendor intelligence database that becomes a competitive advantage—new clients benefit from accumulated knowledge, reducing assessment time and improving accuracy.

5. Integration Architecture for Your Ecosystem

Consultancies operate with client CRM systems, document repositories, project management tools, and billing platforms. Fluvial provides:

Complete API Coverage - Every UI capability accessible via REST APIs with OpenAPI specifications for easy integration.

Webhook Event System - Real-time notifications when assessments complete, approvals are received, or risks are identified—triggering workflows in your systems. Enhanced with CEL guard expressions to control when webhooks fire and CEL data transforms to shape payloads for receiving systems.

Webhook-Driven Automation - Configure webhook receivers in your infrastructure that respond to questionnaire events, enabling custom automation that executes when questionnaires transition between statuses (update CRM, notify billing, generate deliverables).

White-Label Capabilities - Client-facing URLs, branded templates, and customized user experiences that present your firm’s identity, not the platform vendor’s.

Integration isn’t a services engagement; it’s self-service capabilities your technical team can implement as needed.

Practical Deployment Scenarios

Scenario: Multi-Client Vendor Assessment Practice

Your firm conducts vendor security assessments for financial services clients. Each client has different risk frameworks, approval requirements, and reporting formats.

Implementation:

  • Define vendor assessment questionnaire template based on firm methodology
  • Create client-specific projects with customized workflows (Client A requires CISO approval; Client B needs board committee review)
  • Configure document mappings to populate client-specific report templates
  • Build firm-wide vendor profile database capturing assessment results
  • Set CEL policies ensuring Client A never sees Client B’s vendor data

Result:

  • New client onboarding takes hours (customize workflow, apply branding) not weeks (rebuild from scratch)
  • Vendor intelligence accumulates—when Client C asks about a vendor you assessed for Client A, you have historical data
  • Client deliverables maintain consistency while reflecting client-specific requirements
  • Junior analysts follow defined workflows; senior partners approve high-risk findings

Scenario: Due Diligence Service Line

Your firm conducts M&A due diligence across legal, financial, operational, and technical domains for private equity clients.

Implementation:

  • Create due diligence questionnaire templates by domain (legal, financial, technical)
  • Configure multi-stage workflows: data gathering → expert analysis → partner review → client presentation
  • Use hierarchical permissions so legal specialists see legal sections, financial analysts see financial data
  • Map findings to due diligence report templates (investment memo, management presentation, data room summaries)
  • Build target company database tracking assessments across deals

Result:

  • Deals move faster—questionnaires deploy in hours, not days spent reformatting Word documents
  • Quality improves—structured assessment ensures no domains are overlooked
  • Knowledge persists—insights from past deals inform future assessments
  • Client confidence increases—comprehensive audit trails demonstrate diligence rigor

Scenario: Regulatory Compliance Advisory

Your firm helps financial institutions prepare for regulatory examinations by conducting mock assessments using regulatory frameworks.

Implementation:

  • Build questionnaire libraries based on regulatory requirements (Basel III, GDPR, SOC 2)
  • Configure approval workflows matching client’s governance structure
  • Generate compliance reports in regulatory submission formats
  • Maintain complete audit trails for client examination documentation
  • Use document automation to track remediation of identified gaps

Result:

  • Repeatable methodology across clients facing similar regulations
  • Rapid deployment when new regulations emerge (modify templates, not rebuild)
  • Defensible documentation showing systematic compliance verification
  • Client reference database demonstrating compliance patterns and best practices

Modern Architecture:

  • API-first design (OpenApi 3.1 specifications)
  • Industry-standard technologies (JSON Schema, JSON Patch, CEL policies)
  • Cloud-native deployment (containers, horizontal scaling)
  • Comprehensive test coverage (confidence in modifications)

You’re not adopting bleeding-edge technology with uncertain reliability. You’re getting proven capabilities with modern implementation.

What This Isn’t

Not a Survey Tool - Consumer survey platforms (SurveyMonkey, Typeform) can’t handle professional assessments: weighted scoring, multi-party workflows, audit trails, access control.

Not a Generic TPRM Platform - Corporate vendor risk platforms assume you’re buying for internal use, not delivering services to clients. They can’t isolate client data or support white-label deployment.

Not a Custom Development Project - You’re not hiring developers to build assessment infrastructure. You’re configuring a platform that already handles the complexity.

Not Locked to One Use Case - The same platform serves vendor assessment, due diligence, compliance, procurement—any structured assessment process your firm conducts.

Business Considerations

Pricing Model

Tiered subscription based on:

  • Number of active projects/engagements
  • document automation volume (vendor profiles, reference documents)
  • API consumption for integration-heavy deployments

This aligns cost with value delivery: small pilot projects cost less, large multi-client practices scale appropriately.

Deployment Options

  • Cloud SaaS - We host, you access (fastest deployment)
  • Private Cloud - Dedicated instance in your cloud environment
  • On-Premises - Your infrastructure (for firms with strict data residency requirements)

Services Philosophy

Platform is self-service by design. Professional services available for:

  • Initial template development for firm methodologies
  • Complex integration with existing systems
  • Training for advanced workflow configuration

Goal: you operate independently, not dependent on vendor services.

Data Ownership

Client data belongs to clients. Firm intellectual property (templates, methodologies, workflows) belongs to your firm. Platform provides data export and migration capabilities—no lock-in beyond the value you receive.

Next Steps

For firms evaluating assessment infrastructure:

  1. Technical Review - Deploy pilot project with real engagement data to validate capabilities
  2. Workflow Design - Map one client’s approval process to CEL policies to test flexibility
  3. Integration Testing - Connect to one existing system (CRM or document repository) to verify API capabilities
  4. Economics Analysis - Compare platform cost against current manual processes or custom development

We’re not selling simplicity—we’re providing sophistication that matches how advisory firms actually operate. The platform reflects 20 years of enterprise deployment experience, now available with the flexibility consultancies require.

Fluvial serves firms that conduct complex assessments for clients and need infrastructure that matches their sophistication without imposing workflow rigidity or creating client data management problems.