How Mailchimp Increased ERM Efficiency by 300%

In our Spotlight on Success series, Gary Brendle, Director of Risk Oversight and Audit Operations at Mailchimp, shares how he leveraged Optro's integrated platform to see significant time savings across the different phases of the risk management cycle — as well as increased executive engagement in ERM. 

Tell us a little bit about Mailchimp. 

Mailchimp is an all in one marketing platform for small business. We empower millions of customers around the world to start and grow their businesses with our smart marketing technology.

How did you decide to implement Optro's risk management solution?

We were already implementing Optro's SOXHUB and Compliance modules at the time, and we just happened to get exposure to the RiskOversight module at the Optro annual conference. We demoed and we decided, hey, let’s add this module on in our current implementation — and the rest is history. 

What improvements have you seen since implementing Optro's RiskOversight at Mailchimp?

Our users used to go through and spend about an hour rating the different risks — with RiskOversight, that process went down from about an hour to about 20 minutes. We went from a several week process on administering the survey, digesting results, building your report, and presenting that to management — to it being a one man show. 

I have one guy on my team who can do the exercise, he can get the risk listing set up, he can administer that test to as many folks in the organization as he wants. Then all those results are populated automatically in the platform, the heat map is generated, and we can present to our executives directly in the software. 

How has Optro's RiskOversight been received by other stakeholders in your organization? 

One unexpected surprise was the level of executive engagement that we now have. They brag about it amongst the organization — they want to put it in front of people. This level of software-driven sophistication, it meshes really well with our product and tech company vibes overall.