Howden: TPRM & Employee Experience

Systematic legacy becomes business liability

Howden operates globally with over 23,000 employees coordinating complex supplier ecosystems. When your business depends on managing risk for clients, your own third-party risk framework can't be an afterthought. Yet the company's vendor risk management implementation had become a bottleneck. Upgrading to ServiceNow's TPRM module required addressing years of accumulated technical debt while maintaining business continuity.

The challenges ran deeper than surface-level UX issues. Employees lacked a single pane of glass for tracking supplier engagements, creating visibility gaps as Howden's vendor landscape expanded. Each new supplier onboarding exposed the same friction points: unclear workflows, manual workarounds, and fragmented risk data.

For external suppliers, the experience was equally problematic. Questionnaires arrived through an impersonal ServiceNow-branded portal that undermined Howden's professional image. Risk assessments lacked the sophistication to automatically identify high-risk engagements.

Plugin version incompatibilities prevented full feature utilisation. Unnecessary customisations layered onto previous fixes created maintenance nightmares. Howden's procurement and risk teams recognised they were managing third-party risk despite their technology, not because of it.

Four weeks from broken to operational

Pulsar's approach prioritised system health before feature expansion. The team began by resolving longstanding defects and reverting counterproductive customisations — establishing a stable foundation for the VRM-to-TPRM upgrade.

With technical debt addressed, Pulsar configured TPRM capabilities aligned to Howden's actual workflows. Inherent Risk Questionnaires now trigger subsequent actions based on initial responses, creating intelligent routing that reduces manual triage. A Due Diligence Request intake form centralises employee requests for supplier onboarding, reassessment, and offboarding through the Employee Centre portal.

Risk scoring automation calculates engagement risk based on questionnaire responses, flagging high-risk suppliers for enhanced due diligence. The upgraded Due Diligence Workflow replaced legacy processes with streamlined TPRM-native functionality.

For external suppliers, Pulsar built a fully branded vendor portal reflecting Howden's corporate identity. Third parties now respond to questionnaires through an interface that reinforces Howden's professional brand.

End-to-end risk management, finally unified

Howden now manages third-party risk through a single system designed for scale. The Employee Center portal provides intuitive self-service capabilities that reduced IT support ticket volume whilst improving employee satisfaction. Procurement officers track supplier status without chasing updates across multiple systems. Risk managers identify high-risk engagements automatically.

Built to scale with confidence

The technical upgrade positioned Howden for iterative development. As the supplier landscape expands, the TPRM platform scales alongside — providing visibility, control, and automated risk assessment without creating manual burden. The foundation is set for continuous improvement: additional risk domains, enhanced reporting, and deeper integration with Howden's broader risk ecosystem.