case study
Continuous Compliance as a Startup Growth Hack
As an Antler-funded startup, growth hacking is all important to Portant winning customers. Portant quickly realised that deploying 6pillars’ automated security and continuous compliance allowed them to demonstrate a higher level of compliance which was essential to enterprise customer acquisition, driving higher conversion and ultimately reducing the cost of acquisition per customer (CAC).
Portant automates the boring stuff.
Portant allows users to delete repetition from their workday, so they can get back to the kind of work only humans can do.
Portant is a document automation solution that enables efficiency gains so you can get back to the important stuff. Portant removes manual data entry, saving customers the time and effort of copy/pasting or retyping.
Typos should be a thing of the past. With Portant, all information is transposed from the original data source, eliminating mistakes from copying and pasting or manual data entry. Plus, formatting is guaranteed to be consistent on all documents.
About
Portant
Executive Summary
As an Antler-funded startup, growth hacking is all important to Portant winning customers. Portant quickly realised that deploying 6pillars’ automated security and continuous compliance allowed them to demonstrate a higher level of compliance which was essential to enterprise customer acquisition, driving higher conversion and ultimately reducing the cost of acquisition per customer (CAC).
Portant’s Challenge
Portant’s unique document automation solution allows customers to materially reduce repetition from their staffs’ daily operational tasks.
While acquisition of customers at a grass roots level has come naturally, allowing the company to sign up thousands of local and international companies, conversion of those larger customers into enterprise engagements often requires a demonstration of compliance with a host of leading international standards. This, in turn, brings with it an operational overhead that can be crippling for a startup that is focussing on their development roadmap, customer acquisition and investor engagement.
6pillars’ Solution
Portant immediately saw the potential that 6pillars’ automated cyber security and continuous compliance solution had to transform their security and compliance posture into a USP while at the same time greatly reducing the operational overhead of compliance.
Deploy
Through an initial discovery engagement, 6pillars evaluated the Portant environment and deployed a suite of AWS native security services.
Analyse
Once all the required AWS security services had been deployed (including AWS Security Hub, Control Tower, Config, GuardDuty, etc.), 6pillars was able to easily analyse and establish Portant’s security posture and compliance with all the standards currently referenced by AWS Security Hub (being CIS, PCI-DSS and AWS’ own FSBP).
Automate
6pillars’ then deployed its security and compliance automation and comprehensive automation library to enable continuous compliance with cloud security best practice and leading international standards.
Optimise
As part of its ongoing AUTOMATE service, 6pillars will extend its automation to any new local and international standards and controls within AWS Security Hub.
Why Portant Chose 6pillars
Portant’s selection of 6pillars came about as a result of previous interactions with 6pillars’ cofounders during an Antler startup generator program in 2020.
Portant saw the opportunity to engage 6pillars to accelerate their security posture and adopt continuous compliance to reduce the operational overhead of compliance.
Why AWS
Portant chose the leading global hyperscale cloud provider as the ideal platform to be able to deploy a suite of native security services to improve security and give them greater visibility into their compliance with leading standards.
In addition to leadership in performant, reliable and cost-effective cloud infrastructure, AWS now adds services that deliver the most comprehensive and mature cloud native integrated security services.
Results and Benefits
- Higher Customer Conversion: Continuous compliance drives revenue
- Lower CAC: Increased compliance through automation improves conversion
- Reduced Operating Costs: Lower operating costs through automation
- Future Proofing: Automation of new standards as they as released
James Fyfe, CEO of Portant had this to say about 6pillars:
​
“The operational overhead of compliance is something a that we’d rather reduce or even avoid if possible. We’d much rather be focussed on enhancing our application, winning new customers and driving value for our shareholders than compliance.”
“It’s not just the cost – it’s more about the time spent and the opportunity cost that comes along with that. Startups are all about solving pain, and 6pillars’ automated security maintains our continuous compliance with leading international standards.”
“In addition, we’re looking forward to automation around new standards like the American Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) being added in the future, delivering growing value in the service over time.”