DNV sells assurance. Yet for years its own supply chain assessments — site audits, supplier evaluations and compliance checks alike — ran on Excel spreadsheets, email threads and manually completed forms. Standardising that work on Certainty cut the time spent compiling and reporting assessment data by 50% and returned five to ten hours a week to every employee who manages assessments and reporting.
Summary: DNV replaced spreadsheet- and email-based supply chain assessments with Certainty as the production platform for its global Supply Chain Management services. Protocol creation, supplier self-assessment, auditor review, technical review and non-conformity lifecycle management now run in one place. DNV reports a 50% reduction in manual reporting effort, five to ten hours a week saved per assessment manager, and faster management decision-making — while retaining the flexibility to build bespoke protocols for individual clients.
By the numbers
- 50% reduction in time spent compiling and reporting assessment data (DNV, 2026).
- 5–10 hours per week saved for each employee who regularly manages assessments and reporting.
- Several hours saved per audit cycle through workflow automation and notifications.
- Four core processes now run on the platform: customised client audits, supplier assessments, compliance self-assessments and corrective action plan management.
The company: the independent expert in assurance and risk management
Founded in 1864 and headquartered in Høvik, Norway, DNV is the independent expert in assurance and risk management, and the world’s leading classification society. DNV is a USD $2.5 billion company with 12,000 employees and 350 offices operating in more than 100 countries, delivering testing, certification and technical advisory services across the energy value chain and helping businesses assure the performance of their organisations, products, people and facilities throughout their supply chains.
Certainty Software is the production platform behind DNV’s global Supply Chain Management services.
The challenge: a global assurance business running on spreadsheets and email
For a business whose product is assurance, running its own assessments on manual tooling created a set of compounding problems — limited visibility, heavy consolidation effort, inconsistent output and no single authoritative record.
Prior to implementing Certainty, almost all of our assessments, site audits, and compliance checks were managed through Excel spreadsheets, emails, and manually completed forms.
Julia Scattolin, Senior Global Supply Chain Consultant, Supply Chain Assurance — DNV Business Assurance
- Limited visibility. No single view of assessment status across sites and suppliers.
- Heavy consolidation effort. Significant time spent pulling results together and preparing reports by hand.
- Inconsistent data quality. Reports varied depending on who produced them and how.
- Delayed action identification. Issues surfaced slowly, because finding them meant reading through the consolidation.
- Follow-up by email. Chasing non-conformities to closure required repeated manual follow-ups.
- No centralised compliance record. Difficulty maintaining a single authoritative record for compliance purposes.
The requirement: scale, without losing the ability to be bespoke
Alongside the internal problem sat a commercial one. DNV needed to offer supply chain audits globally, at scale, with a consistent standard of output — while still accommodating customer-specific protocols and work processes. Standardisation and customisation usually pull against each other. DNV needed both.
We were looking for a platform which we could use to optimize and scale our Supply Chain Management (SCM) Services. The idea was to use a centralized secure and scalable platform which would enable us to offer supply chain audits on scale globally — with a high and consistent standard of output, high flexibility in deployment, and quick time to market for bespoke protocols.
Kiran Venkitesh, Platforms Manager, Supply Chain & Product Assurance — DNV
The solution: one platform, many client programmes
DNV was introduced to Certainty through a professional connection and recommendation, then evaluated it against a defined set of criteria: configuration without IT dependency, a multi-project and multi-customer architecture, strong reporting, scalability across regions and users, enterprise-grade data security, and offline and online auditing in multiple languages.
As part of the process we evaluated quite a few platforms. What made Certainty a choice was the ease of use combined with the powerful features offered by the software. It was an enterprise grade software solution, which supported offline and online audits in multiple languages allowing us to produce consistent meaningful metrics.
Kiran Venkitesh, Platforms Manager, Supply Chain & Product Assurance — DNV
What separated Certainty from the alternatives
- A highly configurable checklist builder and workflow engine.
- Corrective action tracking built into the assessment lifecycle.
- A user-friendly interface that auditors and suppliers adopt without heavy training.
- A responsive support team that understands the business.
The decisive factor was independence. As DNV put it, most platforms they contacted required a lot of time and dependency on the platform’s own IT team.
Implementation: phased, piloted, then scaled
DNV took a deliberately staged approach — piloting a small number of programmes first, then proposing and configuring the platform for further clients as confidence built. Three obstacles came up, and each was worked through: aligning global teams on standardising customised programmes to fit the platform, addressed with deep-dive workshops; migrating Excel-based processes into a structured platform, handled programme by programme; and user adoption, tackled with training sessions and demonstrations.
We believe the implementation was quite straightforward due to the platform’s flexibility — but also Certainty team’s responsiveness on our requests.
Julia Scattolin, Senior Global Supply Chain Consultant, Supply Chain Assurance — DNV Business Assurance
Still on paper or spreadsheets? Take the 9-question Digital Audit & Inspection Readiness Quiz to see whether your safety and quality processes have outgrown manual tools — in just a few minutes.
The results: half the reporting effort, and time redirected to resolution
By digitalising customised audits, supplier assessments, compliance self-assessments and corrective action plan management, DNV estimates a 50% reduction in time spent compiling and reporting assessment data, and five to ten hours a week saved for each employee who regularly manages assessments and reporting.
That sentence is the heart of the result. The work did not get smaller; it got redirected. Time that went into assembling reports now goes into closing findings.
- Standardised audit workflows across customised client programmes.
- Real-time visibility of results and open actions.
- Automated reports and notifications replacing manual consolidation and email chasing.
- Due-date tracking on non-conformities, with automatic follow-up.
- Centralised documentation — one authoritative compliance record.
Certainty as DNV’s production platform
Certainty now forms our core system when offering Supply Chain audits to our global customers. The platform allows us to deploy, schedule and maintain the assurance framework used to assess our clients’ supply chains at scale — from creating the checklists and scheduling the audits, through supplier self-assessments and auditor review, to technical reviews and non-conformity life cycle management.
Kiran Venkitesh, Platforms Manager, Supply Chain & Product Assurance — DNV
Working with the Certainty team
Certainty team has been very collaborative and responsive throughout both implementation and ongoing activities. They always demonstrate how quickly they understand our needs, and provide practical recommendations and suggestions, besides implementing the features we suggest as well. This is one of the most valuable things for us.
Julia Scattolin, Senior Global Supply Chain Consultant, Supply Chain Assurance — DNV Business Assurance
Asked for three words to describe working with Certainty, the answer was: flexible, responsive and collaborative.
Why it matters for supply chain and assurance teams
DNV’s challenge is the one every assurance and supply chain leader recognises: spreadsheets and email cannot produce a defensible, reportable, scalable assessment record. The fixes that worked for DNV are what large, multi-site and multi-client organisations need — standardise the workflow without losing the ability to be bespoke, automate the routing and the chasing, centralise the record, and surface trends rather than just results.
Certainty runs audit and inspection programmes for global Fortune 500 manufacturers and leading national operators alike. Whether you assess ten suppliers or ten thousand, the outcome is the same: spend time resolving issues, not assembling the report about them. To go deeper, explore the full safety inspection software guide.
Key Takeaways:
- Digitalising assessments halved the time DNV spends compiling and reporting assessment data.
- Assessment managers gained five to ten hours a week, redirected from data collection to issue resolution.
- One platform now carries many client programmes without sacrificing bespoke protocols.
- Configuration without IT dependency was the decisive differentiator in the platform evaluation.
Your toolkit for better audits, inspections & investment decisions
ROI Calculator
See the financial impact of Certainty — instantly. Get a clear, data-driven estimate of your potential savings. Translate time saved and risk reduced into real financial value to build your business case with confidence.
Digital Audit & Inspection Readiness Quiz
Is your team ready for a smarter, streamlined approach? Take our 9-question readiness quiz to find out whether your audit and inspection processes have outgrown manual, paper-based, or spreadsheet-driven tools.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What problem did DNV solve with Certainty?
Almost all of DNV’s assessments, site audits and compliance checks were managed through Excel spreadsheets, emails and manually completed forms, which limited visibility, slowed action identification and made a single authoritative compliance record difficult to maintain. Certainty replaced that with standardised workflows, automated reporting and centralised documentation.
What measurable results did DNV achieve?
DNV estimates a 50% reduction in time spent compiling and reporting assessment data, five to ten hours per week saved for each employee who regularly manages assessments and reporting, and several hours saved per audit cycle through workflow automation and notifications.
How long did implementation take?
DNV took a phased approach, piloting a small number of programmes before configuring the platform for further clients. The main obstacles were aligning global teams on standardised programmes, migrating Excel-based processes and user adoption — addressed through deep dives, training sessions and demonstrations.
Why did DNV choose Certainty over other platforms?
The differentiators were a highly configurable checklist builder and workflow engine, corrective action tracking, a user-friendly interface and a responsive support team. Decisively, most alternatives required significant time and dependency on the vendor’s own IT team, where Certainty could be configured by the business itself.
Can one Certainty platform support multiple clients and protocols?
Yes. DNV runs multiple projects and customers within a single platform, with bespoke protocols per client, supporting offline and online audits in multiple languages across regions and user populations.
Scale your supply chain assurance programme
See how Certainty can standardise, automate and scale your supplier assessment and audit programme.
The Challenge
The Solution & Result
“As part of the process we evaluated quite a few platforms. What made Certainty a choice was the ease of use combined with the powerful features offered by the software. It was an enterprise grade software solution, which supported offline and online audits in multiple languages allowing us to produce consistent meaningful metrics. In addition, the data security it offered was a key consideration, along with the flexibility to adopt the system to meet our needs” says Kiran Venkitesh.
An International Partnership with Global Reach
“It is truly an honour to be working so closely with one of the world’s oldest, most reputable and respected testing, certification and technical advisory service companies on the planet.
We are proud and excited to be providing such a key component to DNV’s global Supply Chain Management and Assurance services and are thrilled to be a part of the solution offering they provide to their clients– and their many thousands of suppliers – globally.” Hewitt Roberts, CEO Certainty Software, Inc.
“Certainty now forms our core system when offering Supply Chain audits to our global customers. From the creation, testing and maintenance of protocols – and setting up and managing customer data including sites and users, we use Certainty as our production platform to provide our Supply Chain Management services to our clients globally.
The platform allows us to deploy, schedule and maintain the assurance framework used to assess our clients’ supply chains at scale. This includes steps right from the creation of the checklists, scheduling the audits, self-assessments by suppliers, audit by our auditors to technical reviews and the non-conformity life cycle management.”
