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ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager vs Workiva Wdesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ARIS Risk and Compliance Ma...
Ranking in GRC
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Workiva Wdesk
Ranking in GRC
10th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (16th), Financial Close Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the GRC category, the mindshare of ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workiva Wdesk is 2.6%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
GRC Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Workiva Wdesk2.6%
ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager1.4%
Other96.0%
GRC
 

Featured Reviews

BPMexp67 - PeerSpot reviewer
BPM Expert at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Covers the entire risk management cycle, from identification and evaluation to control, mitigation, and monitoring
The most effective features are the basic ones to evaluate and control risk. We have many specific small models inside of ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager, like issue management. These are smaller add-ons depending on the needs. You are including specific models as well. The basic ones do exactly what is required for risk management: identification, evaluation, control, mitigation, and modification. And, we have dashboards with the possibility to configure compliance policies and risk limits based on which we can create alarms. If there are maximum limits, we create alarms attached to the responsible people. Normally, there is someone that identifies the risk, and then you have the risk owner. These people [normal users] can send notifications to the risk owner, who will evaluate the risk and decide whether it's important to control it or not. I remember a project where the customer wanted to control all risks and assigned many people to identify them. They started identifying risks everywhere. After a few years, the customer realized that it didn't make sense to control all of them. So, they created limits—levels of risk the company was willing to accept because it was more expensive to implement controls than to manage the risk. So, regarding ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager, you can implement all the risks and policies you can imagine because it's very customizable. You can customize a lot of things.
TB
Senior Financial Analyst at Bakelite Synthetics
Allows multiple users, each responsible for specific sections, to collaborate efficiently
One area where Workiva Wdesk could improve is by ensuring that its cloud-based system is fully compatible with the most current versions of PowerPoint and Excel. Sometimes, the features available in their versions of these applications fell short of the company's standards, which could be limiting. Having access to the latest versions might increase costs, but it is essential to keep up with the evolving technology landscape and meet the demands of companies that require faster reporting processes. This would make it easier to handle custom requests and adjustments, like creating specific data categories in Excel and seamlessly transferring them into Wdesk for presentations without the need for time-consuming manual adjustments.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the risk testing, where you can attach your processes to the risk, and automatically generate all of the tests."
"We can set it so that for a specific risk, or for all risks if we want, people will receive automatic notifications to do the evaluation and implement or test the control at a set interval, like every six months or every year."
"It makes the compliance process more efficient and more effective."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to easily upload and update financial results, creating a dynamic data sheet."
"Workiva Wdesk is pretty good in terms of getting the data from the system, automating the reporting schedules...It has a very good integration with ERP tools."
"The cross-functionality between connectivity, whether through API connections between different software platforms or the connection of data collection to the actual written ESG report, is highly valuable. The connectivity of all these aspects significantly aids in data assurance, which I consider a bonus."
"The collaboration within the platform is valuable."
"It helps you to maintain a backup of your data, including the connectivity with the tables, which provides a user-friendly way to handle and access your files."
"Workiva Wdesk has a flow diagram that is standardized, making it easy for people to file documents on ECDAs, which are in HTML format."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the modeling less strict so that connectors can be more flexible."
"In future releases, I would like to see more features around AI (artificial intelligence)."
"One area where Workiva Wdesk could improve is by ensuring that its cloud-based system is fully compatible with the most current versions of PowerPoint and Excel."
"The speed must be improved."
"Regarding the solution, reporting has certain areas that can be considered for improvement."
"The tool's script encoding needs to be updated to make it more user-friendly and less of a manual process when changes are made to a company's program. Those changes happen frequently due to mandatory or voluntary reporting requirements, leading to lost linkage connections that must be manually reset each time a change is made. This aspect is not functional now, and I see it as an opportunity for improvement."
"The most critical issue is the need to shift between uppercase and lowercase."
"With this product, it's more about the integrated data model where you can have a one-to-many/many-to-one relationship between your policies and processes, risks, and controls. They need to showcase how you can put those pieces together."
"At this point, I don't see a compelling reason to invest in Workiva. It may be necessary for compliance and controlling the version of SCC, but not everyone needs its high-end capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Our clients in Asia think that the solution is too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager?
I recommend it to my customers. Sometimes, we follow the normal cycle: risk identification, then evaluation, then mitigation, and lastly, monitoring. In other processes, we use the software to anal...
What advice do you have for others considering ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager?
At this moment, I would recommend this tool. This is the tool I know more than the others. I know a little bit about BWise and other tools like Spark. But ARIS is the one I know best because I've b...
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Also Known As

No data available
Wdesk
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alicorp, Tesco, Dubai Municipality, Emirates NBD, Suva - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as being in the market of business process management for more than 30 years, serving users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
Noodles Company, eBay, Winnebago, American Assets Trust, AmericanEnterprise, Calpian, Capstone Infrastructure, Cascades, Circor International, Coeur Mining, Davey, Dr Pepper Snapple
Find out what your peers are saying about ARIS Risk and Compliance Manager vs. Workiva Wdesk and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.