The GRC Cloud for Consulting Firms and External Advisors

Demand for external consulting in the areas of information security, data protection and business continuity has been growing for years. NIS-2, tighter GDPR enforcement and the increasing threat of cyberattacks are driving more and more companies to seek external support in setting up their management systems. For consulting firms, this creates an attractive market environment that also brings operational challenges.

Anyone who manages 10, 20 or 50 clients in parallel knows the bottlenecks: every new customer requires the setup of individual documentation, the adaptation of policies and the management of specific assets and risks. Repetitive tasks such as the creation of records of processing activities, risk assessments or catalogs of measures tie up time that is missing for actual consulting work. The tedious exchange of information via email and file storage leads to lack of transparency and susceptibility to errors.

At the same time, cost pressure is rising: customers expect professional results at competitive rates. Advisors who manage every client manually in separate Excel spreadsheets or local tools quickly reach their capacity limits. The consequences: loss of quality, missed deadlines and profitability that declines despite full order books.

To solve this dilemma, successful consulting firms rely on a central GRC platform with multi-tenancy. Instead of building new infrastructure for every customer, templates, frameworks and best practices are defined once and rolled out to new clients at the push of a button. The result: shorter implementation times, more capacity for new projects and a scalable business model.

The Akarion GRC Cloud was designed specifically for this use case: with multi-tenancy, inheritance functions and template tenants, even complex customer structures can be centrally mapped and efficiently managed.

The core problem for many consulting firms is the lack of scalability: every new client means a complete rebuild of documentation, processes and structures. The Akarion GRC Cloud solves this problem with a three-tier tenant concept specifically tailored to the requirements of consulting firms.

Generic tenant: advisors define a basic organizational structure once, with threats, controls, reports, measures, audits and KPIs. This foundation forms the basis for all further tenants.

Industry-specific templates: building on the generic tenant, templates can be created for specific industries, such as healthcare, energy or automotive. These templates contain industry-specific frameworks (B3S Healthcare, B3S Energy, TISAX), pre-configured risk scenarios and appropriate catalogs of measures.

Roll-out to customer tenants: new customers are set up in minutes by rolling out the appropriate industry template. All structures, templates and frameworks are immediately available and can be customer-specifically adapted.

The inheritance function works in both directions: top-down, central changes (such as updated data processing agreements or new risk assessments) are automatically transferred to all affected tenants. Bottom-up, tenant-specific additions can be made without altering the central template.

This concept significantly shortens implementation time per tenant and creates capacity for new projects. Combined with Smart Content AI, which generates risk scenarios, measures and audit content context-sensitively, advisors achieve time savings of up to 80% during initial setup.

The Data Protection module expands the consulting portfolio to include the entire GDPR lifecycle: records of processing activities, data protection impact assessments and data subject requests can be managed across tenants. Because it works on the same data foundation as ISMS and BCMS, no duplicate work emerges.

For consulting firms, the choice of the right tool determines efficiency, scalability and profitability. The Akarion GRC Cloud, the SaaS platform of the German GRC software provider AKARION, was developed with consulting firms as a central target group:

• Multi-tenancy with inheritance (top-down and bottom-up): centrally maintain templates, roles and content and roll them out to all clients at the push of a button, including template tenants for industry-specific configurations
• ISMS, BCMS and Data Protection on a central data foundation: expand your own consulting portfolio to include all GRC disciplines without having to combine different tools
• Smart Content AI for AI-powered generation of risk scenarios, measures, business impact scenarios and audit content, with up to 80% time savings during initial client setup
• Simultaneous mapping of 19+ standards: ISO 27001, BSI IT-Grundschutz, NIS-2, TISAX, DORA, B3S Healthcare, B3S Energy, BSI C5, PCI DSS and other frameworks in parallel
• Integrated audit management with digital checklists, third-party risk management and seamless tracking of measures for internal and external audits
• Customizable dashboards and reporting per client: document compliance status, maturity level and open measures at the push of a button
• Granular role and permission management for collaboration between consulting teams and customer staff
• Collaborative working with comment function, task distribution and workflow management across tenant boundaries
• plus multilingual interface with automatic translation, ideal for international consulting projects.

AKARION offers consulting firms a transparent cooperation model with attractive commissions and recurring license revenues. Shared market presence creates additional sales synergies.

AKARION itself is ISO 27001 certified and officially listed by the BSI as an IT-Grundschutz tool. Hosting takes place 100% on European servers (STACKIT), ensuring true digital sovereignty and the protection of sensitive client data.

Over 900 organizations already trust the Akarion GRC Cloud. Consulting partners such as TÜV Austria, Bechtle, PwC, Reply Spike, DriveLock, BREDEX, itk Ingenieure, DAISECO, ISecM and qorton successfully use the platform in their customer projects.

The combination of multi-tenancy, AI support and technical depth makes the platform the ideal tool for GRC advisors who want to scale their business efficiently.