NAVEX vs Diligent: GRC and Compliance Platform Comparison

NAVEX and Diligent both support enterprise GRC programs, but they fit different operating models. NAVEX tends to map well to compliance-centric teams standardizing policy, training, incident intake, and third-party risk workflows, while Diligent often fits boards and executives who need integrated governance, audit, and risk reporting with strong board-facing collaboration.

Key takeaways:

• NAVEX vs Diligent comes down to whether your priority is operational compliance workflows (NAVEX) or governance and board-level oversight plus audit/risk rollups (Diligent).
• Both can support a defensible program, but your control effectiveness evidence will depend on how well you configure taxonomy, ownership, and testing cadences.
• Implementation risk is usually about data model decisions, workflow design, and stakeholder adoption, not “feature gaps.”

CISOs and Compliance Officers rarely fail vendor selection because a platform can’t “do GRC.” They fail because the platform doesn’t match their risk appetite, the way they evidence control effectiveness, and the organization’s regulatory posture. That mismatch shows up later as workaround spreadsheets, inconsistent issue taxonomy, and reporting that looks polished but can’t stand up to examiner follow-ups.

This NAVEX vs Diligent guide is written for teams building (or repairing) a defensible program across third-party risk, compliance, audit, and governance. Both vendors operate in the GRC and ethics/compliance ecosystem, and both have credible enterprise footprints. The practical question is which product family aligns to how you run: policy and training operations, incident and case management, and third-party due diligence workflows versus board governance, audit execution, and executive risk aggregation.

One ground rule: “better” is situational. If you don’t first decide what “good” evidence looks like for your regulators and internal audit, either tool can end up as an expensive repository. The sections below aim to prevent that.

NAVEX vs Diligent: side-by-side comparison table (descriptive)

Evaluation area	NAVEX (as positioned on NAVEX’s site/product materials)	Diligent (as positioned on Diligent’s site/product materials)
Primary orientation	Ethics & compliance operations plus GRC-style workflows; commonly centered on policies, training, helpline/case intake, and risk/compliance processes	Governance, audit, and risk oversight; commonly centered on boards, executives, audit teams, and enterprise reporting
Best-fit buyer	Compliance leaders who own policy/training, investigations, third-party risk process, and need consistent workflow enforcement	Corporate governance, internal audit, and ERM owners who need board-ready reporting and governance collaboration
Third-party risk (TPRM/TPDD)	Typically positioned around vendor/third-party risk workflows and questionnaires within broader compliance operations	Typically positioned as part of ERM/audit ecosystems, with risk registers and oversight reporting connecting to audit and governance
Workflow configurability	Configurable workflows that can standardize intake, assignments, approvals, and evidence capture; requires upfront taxonomy work	Configurable workflows that connect risks, audits, issues, and reporting; requires careful design of rollups and board reporting
Policy management	Policy distribution/attestation commonly emphasized in NAVEX’s compliance suite materials	Policy governance may be supported through governance workflows, but often not the “center of gravity” compared to board/audit tooling
Training	Compliance training library and assignment/tracking are commonly emphasized in NAVEX positioning	Training is not typically the primary emphasis compared to governance/audit/risk
Helpline / incident & case management	Strong emphasis in NAVEX’s ethics and compliance platform positioning (hotline + case workflow)	Not typically positioned as a core hotline-first platform; focus tends to be governance/audit/risk oversight
Audit management	May be available in NAVEX’s GRC portfolio depending on modules; typically less board-centric	Often a headline capability in Diligent’s product set (audit planning, execution, reporting) per Diligent positioning
Board reporting and governance collaboration	Usually secondary to compliance operations	Frequently central (board portals, governance workflows, executive reporting) per Diligent positioning
Integrations & ecosystem	Enterprise integrations vary by module; expect some connector work and admin ownership	Enterprise integrations vary; typically positioned for enterprise governance/audit ecosystems with admin ownership
Analytics & reporting	Operational reporting for compliance workloads; effectiveness depends on clean taxonomy and consistent use	Executive/board reporting and dashboards; effectiveness depends on normalized risk/issue hierarchy
Typical admin model	Compliance ops administrator plus process owners in HR/legal/security/procurement	Governance/audit admin plus ERM/audit/risk owners and executive consumers

Note on verification: Product scope and naming shifts across vendor portfolios. Before you treat any row as a requirement match, confirm the exact NAVEX and Diligent modules included in your quote and review their current datasheets/product pages.

Product deep dive: NAVEX

What NAVEX is typically strong at

• Ethics & compliance operations: NAVEX is widely positioned around helpline intake, case management, policy management, and training. For many regulated organizations, that matters because it creates a single operational record of “we communicated the standard, required attestations, trained the population, and handled reports consistently.”
• Standardizing high-volume workflows: Teams we’ve worked with often pick NAVEX when the pain is volume and consistency: policy attestations, training campaigns, incident triage, and third-party onboarding steps. The value is less about fancy dashboards and more about forcing a repeatable process.
• Auditability of compliance actions: For examiner or internal audit follow-up, you typically need timestamps, ownership, and dispositions for actions like attestations, investigation steps, and remediation tasks. NAVEX’s compliance-first framing tends to align with that evidence style.

NAVEX: genuine drawbacks (product-level and program-level)

1. Suite sprawl risk: NAVEX is often sold as a set of modules (training, hotline, policy, risk/GRC). If you buy broadly without a data model plan, you can end up with parallel workflows and inconsistent taxonomy across modules.
2. Reporting depends on disciplined configuration: NAVEX can capture evidence, but “control effectiveness” reporting still hinges on how you define controls, map requirements, and enforce field completion. Many teams underestimate that upfront work.
3. May be less board-governance centric than Diligent: If your executive audience expects board-portal style governance workflows and board-ready packs as a primary use case, NAVEX may not be the natural center compared to governance-first platforms.

Product deep dive: Diligent

What Diligent is typically strong at

• Governance and board-facing workflows: Diligent is well-known in the market for governance tooling (including board collaboration) and positions strongly for executive oversight. For regulated firms, this can help demonstrate governance: decisions, approvals, risk acceptance, and reporting cadence.
• Audit and risk rollups: Diligent frequently positions audit management and enterprise risk reporting as core. Practically, that helps when you need a clean line from risk statements to audits, findings, issues, and remediation status.
• Executive-ready reporting: If your risk appetite program requires consistent aggregation (business unit rollups, top risks, KRIs, issue aging), Diligent’s orientation often matches that need.

Diligent: genuine drawbacks (product-level and program-level)

1. Overhead for teams that mainly need compliance operations: If your day-to-day pain is training assignment, policy attestation, and hotline/case throughput, a governance/audit-first platform can feel misaligned unless you add complementary tools.
2. Data normalization work is non-trivial: Diligent’s value increases when risks, controls, issues, and audits share a consistent hierarchy. Getting there takes stakeholder alignment and steady admin capacity.
3. TPRM may not feel “front and center”: If third-party due diligence is your primary driver, you’ll want to confirm how Diligent handles intake, questionnaires, evidence collection, and monitoring within its risk/audit model, rather than assuming parity with compliance-ops suites.

When to use each approach (team size, maturity, regulatory posture)

Choose NAVEX-style orientation when:

• Team profile: Lean compliance operations team managing high workflow volume across policy/training/helpline plus third-party processes.
• Maturity: You have defined procedures but inconsistent execution. You want to standardize.
• Regulatory posture: Examiners focus on consistent execution and documented evidence (for example, complaint handling, training completion, policy attestation, investigation steps). NAVEX’s compliance workflow orientation often maps well to that operating model.

Choose Diligent-style orientation when:

• Team profile: Internal audit, ERM, and corporate governance are strong stakeholders; board reporting is a first-order requirement.
• Maturity: You already run risk committees, maintain an enterprise risk register, and want audit/risk/issues connected with clean rollups.
• Regulatory posture: Your exams emphasize governance and oversight, risk appetite statements, and demonstrable board engagement with risk decisions. Diligent’s governance framing tends to align to that evidence style.

Cost and resource considerations (what’s realistic to budget for)

Pricing model (qualitative, since public pricing is limited)

• NAVEX pricing: NAVEX commonly sells by modules and scope (users, employees, hotline coverage, etc.). Public, standardized list pricing is not typically posted. Budget for both subscription and implementation services depending on your rollout model.
• Diligent pricing: Diligent commonly sells by product family (governance/board, audit, risk) and scale. Public list pricing is not typically posted. Budget for subscription plus implementation/configuration.

Internal resourcing you should assume (both tools)

• Named system owner (0.25–1.0 FTE) depending on module count and change rate.
• Process owners for third-party risk, audit, privacy, security, HR/legal investigations, and policy governance.
• Data governance: one person accountable for taxonomy (risk/control/issue categories), otherwise your reporting becomes non-defensible fast.

One common mistake: selecting based on feature checklists, then delegating configuration to a junior admin without clear definitions of “risk accepted,” “control tested,” “issue remediated,” and “third party offboarded.”

Implementation complexity and realistic timelines

Timelines vary with scope, but patterns are consistent:

NAVEX implementation tends to be faster when

• You start with one or two high-volume workflows (policy attestations + training campaigns, or hotline + case management).
• You defer deep ERM/control library harmonization to a later phase.
• You can adopt standard templates rather than building bespoke workflow states.

Diligent implementation tends to be faster when

• You already have a reasonably clean risk register and audit methodology.
• Reporting needs are defined upfront (board pack sections, KRI definitions, issue aging rules).
• You assign a product owner with authority to resolve taxonomy disputes.

In practice, both fail when “phase 1” tries to cover every control, every third party, every regulation, and every dashboard. Scope discipline is the difference between a 8–12 week initial rollout and a year-long stalled program. (Those ranges are experiential guidance, not vendor commitments.)

Compliance and regulatory mapping (OCC, FFIEC, NIST, EBA, ISO)

Neither NAVEX nor Diligent is a “regulation in a box.” Your defensible posture comes from how you map your obligations to controls, tests, and evidence.

Use these sources to drive your mapping design:

• OCC Bulletin 2013-29 (Third-Party Relationships): Map third-party lifecycle stages (planning, due diligence, contract, ongoing monitoring, termination) to workflows, required artifacts, and approval gates. Your tool should enforce ownership and evidence capture per stage.
• FFIEC Architecture, Infrastructure, and Operations (AIO) and Outsourcing Technology Services booklets (FFIEC IT Examination Handbook; booklet revisions vary by domain and year): Use these as prompts for examiner-style questions, then map to your due diligence questionnaire sections and ongoing monitoring triggers.
• NIST SP 800-161r1 (2022), Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management: Align third-party risk scenarios, controls, and continuous monitoring to a defined C-SCRM program. In either tool, you want traceability: supplier category → risk → control → assessment/test → issue.
• EBA Guidelines on outsourcing arrangements (2019): For financial services with EU obligations, map register-of-outsourcing requirements, materiality assessments, and exit planning to structured fields and workflows.
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022: Map Annex A controls to internal control owners and evidence objects. A tool helps when it makes evidence retrieval repeatable for surveillance audits, internal audits, and management review.

Practical mapping advice:

1. Define your risk appetite statements (what you accept vs escalate) before you build workflows.
2. Define “control effectiveness” in operational terms: testing frequency, pass/fail criteria, compensating controls, and evidence types.
3. Create a single issue taxonomy across audit findings, third-party gaps, and compliance incidents. Otherwise, your reporting fragments.

Real-world scenarios (which tool fits)

NAVEX fits best when…

• You’re rebuilding an ethics and compliance operating rhythm: training, attestations, incident intake, investigations, and documented remediation.
• Third-party due diligence is run as a compliance workflow with clear gates (e.g., “no PO until risk review complete”), and you need consistent artifacts.

Diligent fits best when…

• Board reporting is mandatory and frequent, and governance workflows are part of your control environment.
• Internal audit wants one place to plan audits, track findings, and report issue remediation with executive rollups.
• ERM is mature enough to benefit from risk aggregation rather than starting from scratch.

Decision matrix (use-case based, not a recommendation)

Your primary driver	Better fit in practice	Why
Standardize training, policy attestations, hotline intake, and case workflow	NAVEX	Product positioning and common deployments center on compliance operations and evidence trails for those activities
Build board-level governance reporting and oversight workflows	Diligent	Governance and executive collaboration are typically core to Diligent’s value proposition
Connect audit plans, findings, and remediation to enterprise risk reporting	Diligent	Common orientation ties audit execution to risk/issue rollups
Run third-party due diligence as a repeatable operational process with clear gates	NAVEX (often)	Compliance-ops workflow orientation can match high-volume due diligence operations; validate module scope
You already have a strong ERM taxonomy and want enterprise rollups	Diligent	Stronger alignment to risk hierarchy and governance reporting needs
You lack standardized compliance processes and need operational control	NAVEX	Faster value if you implement a few standardized workflows and enforce completion and approvals

Frequently Asked Questions

Is NAVEX or Diligent better for third-party risk management?

It depends on whether you treat third-party due diligence as a compliance operations workflow or as part of ERM/audit rollups. Validate how each tool handles questionnaires, evidence collection, approvals, and ongoing monitoring in the modules you’re buying.

Can either tool support OCC Bulletin 2013-29 expectations?

Yes, if you configure lifecycle workflows, required artifacts, ownership, and escalation paths aligned to the OCC’s third-party relationship stages (OCC Bulletin 2013-29). The tool won’t create governance for you; it can enforce it once defined.

Which platform is easier to implement?

NAVEX can be faster to stand up for discrete operational workflows (policy/training/helpline) if you adopt standard patterns. Diligent can be faster when you already have a mature risk register and audit methodology that can be migrated without redesign.

Do these tools replace a control library and testing methodology?

They can store and manage control objects and evidence, but you still need a defined control framework, test procedures, and criteria for effectiveness. Without that, dashboards become activity metrics rather than defensible control effectiveness evidence.

What should we ask for in demos to avoid shelfware?

Ask each vendor to run your workflow end-to-end: third-party intake → risk tiering → due diligence evidence → exception/compensating control → approval → ongoing monitoring trigger → issue remediation → board or executive reporting output.