Vendor Risk Management (VRM) has quietly shifted from a compliance necessity to a core pillar of enterprise resilience. The 2025 SPARK Matrix™ highlights how global enterprises are reshaping their VRM programs, not through more questionnaires, but through AI-led automation, intelligence-driven assessments, and deeper integration into broader GRC and resilience programs. The year also marks a clear transition: more outsourcing, more fourth-party exposure, and more pressure on risk teams to operate at speed and scale. As a result, movement between the 2024 and 2025 quadrants becomes a strategic signal of which vendors are driving real innovation, and which are relying on legacy workflows.
According to Sahil Dhamgaye, Senior Analyst at QKS Group, “The VRM market in 2025 reflects both maturity and transition. Leaders continue to consolidate their strength by embedding VRM into enterprise risk programs, proving that vendor oversight is no longer a compliance obligation but a core element of business resilience. At the same time, the market is shifting toward intelligence-driven practices: automation, AI-enabled validation, and continuous monitoring are replacing static, resource-heavy assessments. What stands out this year is the speed of innovation from vendors compared to last year that is pushing the market forward with differentiated approaches like assessment exchanges and mid-market accessibility. While the fundamentals of third-party risk remain consistent, the direction of travel is clear, as buyers now demand efficiency, demonstrable outcomes, and integration with broader resilience strategies, and vendors unable to meet these expectations risk being left behind.”
The dataset includes every vendor placed across both matrices: ServiceNow, IBM, MetricStream, NAVEX, ProcessUnity, Mitratech, LogicGate, SureCloud, Swiss GRC, OneTrust, Diligent, Archer, Exiger, Resolver, Aravo, LogicManager, BitSight, Coupa, Vanta, Ncontracts, SAI360, Fusion Risk Management, Allgress, Prevalent, and Venminder.
Who’s Evolving (The Movers & Shakers)
The 2025 Leaders quadrant sends a clear message: automation, exchange-driven data, and AI-supported workflows now define VRM maturity. Vendors that blend TPRM seamlessly into enterprise workflows rise; vendors that rely solely on due diligence questionnaires plateau.
The strongest progression story comes from LogicGate, which climbs from Strong Contender to Leader on the back of configurable workflows, its Risk Cloud Quantify engine, and integrations with cyber-intelligence providers that strengthen its third-party intelligence layer. The platform’s no-code design has given business users the power to accelerate assessments without leaning on IT, and the market rewarded it with a quadrant promotion.
Meanwhile, several long-standing Leaders, ServiceNow, IBM, MetricStream, NAVEX, ProcessUnity, Mitratech, and SureCloud, reinforced their position. Their hold on the quadrant is not inertia; it is the outcome of platform-level enhancements. AI-based evidence evaluation, automated issue routing, integrated SLA tracking, and connected risk ecosystems tightened their Technology Excellence and Customer Impact scores.
A standout addition to the Leaders category is Swiss GRC, which arrives as a fresh entrant in 2025. Its GRC Toolbox, supported by an AI assistant and sanction-media intelligence, offers integrated workflows across risk domains without the UI complexity often associated with enterprise GRC platforms. Moving straight into the Leaders quadrant signals both product maturity and market readiness.
Rising Stars (Promotions)
Only one vendor makes a true quadrant-level leap in 2025: LogicGate. Its shift from Strong Contender to Leader underscores the value of enterprise-ready configurability, quantification capabilities for third-party risk, and a balanced approach to intelligence integration. While other vendors strengthened their positions, LogicGate’s movement is the clearest example of YoY upward mobility.
Who’s Stalling (The Static & Dropping)
This category includes both the vendors that remained in their 2024 position and those that moved down a quadrant. Stability is not always stagnation; many of these vendors held competitive ground in a fast-moving market, but the bar for movement is undeniably higher in 2025.
OneTrust, Diligent, Archer, Exiger, Resolver, Aravo, LogicManager, BitSight, and Coupa remain in the Strong Contender category, each for different reasons. Some, like OneTrust, have strong automation but still lack deep SLA and performance monitoring. Others, such as BitSight and Exiger, remain intelligence-first platforms with narrower functional depth in vendor lifecycle management. Meanwhile, procurement-anchored platforms like Coupa remain tightly integrated with source-to-contract workflows but have lighter standalone VRM capabilities.
Two vendors are explicitly moving downward. SAI360 shifts from Leader to Strong Contender due to its reliance on traditional assessment workflows and limited SLA analytics when compared to automation-heavy peers. Fusion Risk Management drops into the Aspirants quadrant, reflecting its strength in operational resilience rather than full-lifecycle VRM, which continues to be an ancillary module rather than a core product.
Across the Leaders quadrant, ServiceNow, IBM, MetricStream, NAVEX, ProcessUnity, Mitratech, and SureCloud retain their positions from 2024 to 2025, demonstrating sustained product investment rather than a lack of movement.
The Changing Guard (Entries & Exits)
Three names entered the 2025 matrix that were absent in 2024, signaling diversification in the VRM landscape.
Swiss GRC breaks in as a Leader, a rare feat for a first-time appearance. Vanta joins as a Strong Contender, bringing AI-enabled compliance automation and breach-intelligence capabilities strengthened by the Riskey acquisition. Ncontracts enters after absorbing Venminder, positioning itself strongly in the U.S. financial services market with examiner-aligned content and bundled due diligence services.
On the other hand, Allgress exits the SPARK Matrix entirely. Prevalent and Venminder disappear as standalone vendors, their offerings re-emerging under Mitratech and Ncontracts, respectively.
Why It Matters (The Buyer Lens)
For risk leaders, the year-on-year movement is more than a quadrant reshuffle; it is a strategic guide to where VRM is heading. The 2025 trends highlight a decisive shift toward AI-assisted workflows, control-centric assessments, and intelligence enrichment. Leaders like ProcessUnity and Mitratech are pushing automated evidence validation and risk exchanges that reduce due diligence overhead. Intelligence providers such as Exiger, BitSight, and Vanta are bringing breach and security signals directly into the VRM process.
For CFOs and CROs, this movement matters because the operational risk surface is expanding. Faster vendor onboarding, fewer manual assessments, and tighter integration with procurement and security workflows are now tied directly to business continuity and regulatory expectations. Vendor consolidation like Prevalent, Mitratech and Venminder, and Ncontracts, also signals a maturing market, where end-to-end suites increasingly outperform point tools.
Conclusion
The VRM landscape between 2024 and 2025 shows a market that is maturing, consolidating, and shifting toward automation at scale. LogicGate emerges as the clearest mover, Swiss GRC, Vanta, and Ncontracts represent new momentum, while long-standing leaders, ServiceNow, IBM, MetricStream, NAVEX, ProcessUnity, Mitratech, and SureCloud, continue to set the standard for integrated, scalable, AI-driven VRM programs. On the other side of the spectrum, SAI360 and Fusion Risk Management reflect the consequences of not aligning VRM with broader intelligence and automation trends.
For buyers, the takeaway is clear: the vendors shaping the future of VRM are the ones leaning into intelligence, automation, and enterprise integration. The SPARK Matrix shifts from 2024 to 2025 to reveal exactly who those vendors are and why their momentum matters.