Audit & Beyond 2025 | Raul Villar Jr., AuditBoard

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Raul Villar Jr.

CEO

AuditBoard

From silos to strategy: Inside AuditBoard’s blueprint for quarterly delivery

The drive to apply artificial intelligence in governance and audit now meets a tougher demand: proof of durable business value. Teams want faster cycles with fewer manual handoffs, favoring a connected risk approach.The demands are twofold: Boards expect clearer risk visibility across functions, while regulators are pressing for accountable AI. Against this backdrop, AuditBoard Inc. emphasizes the intent is to boost people and their productivity rather than sideline them, according to Raul Villar Jr. (pictured), chief executive officer of AuditBoard.AuditBoard’s Raul Villar Jr. talks to theCUBE about audit transformation.“AI really helps in a couple different areas

play_circle_outline Introduction of Raul Villar, CEO of AuditBoard, at the conference.

play_circle_outline Raul's Leadership Journey at AuditBoard: Enhancing Client Relationships Through Innovative Product Development

play_circle_outline Commitment to innovation and maintaining a strong company culture.

play_circle_outline The significance of customer obsession and tailored solutions for international clients.

play_circle_outline Strategies for AuditBoard’s Future: Sustaining Gold Standard Leadership in GRC and Global Market Growth

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Raul Villar Jr., AuditBoard

Raul Villar Jr.

CEO AuditBoard

In this Audit & Beyond segment, Raul Villar Jr., chief executive officer of AuditBoard, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay and Rebecca Knight to share how AuditBoard is scaling its AI-fueled connected risk platform and why “risk in isolation is dangerous.” Villar outlines momentum highlights from the event – 7th year of the conference, 1,200+ users onsite, 10,000+ virtual viewers and 40+ breakouts – alongside business updates such as $300M+ ARR, new leadership energy and the acquisition of FairNow to advance AI governance. He explains how AuditBoard is investing to... Read more

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What is the significance of the annual show for AuditBoard, and what opportunities does it present for attendees? add

What strategies will be used to implement client feedback in shaping the future direction of AuditBoard? add

What are the primary focuses and challenges faced by the company regarding connected risk and global expansion? add

What is the primary cultural value emphasized by AuditBoard in relation to their customers? add

What is the vision of success for the company in 2027? add

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's Live coverage of AuditBoard's Audit and Beyond here in San Diego. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside Rob Strechay. Rob, we've got the CEO.

Rob Strechay

>> This is fun. I think we got to see him on the main stage earlier today. A lot of excitement. Everybody's excited. I'm talking to the folks out at their party last night and at the bar the night before. It's such a time where this is needed to help people take the toil off of what they're doing from an audit perspective. I just love it.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, here to talk about that, more about this is Raul Villar. He is the CEO of AuditBoard. Welcome, Raul.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Knight

>> You are pretty new on the job, and then they said to you, "Oh, and by the way, the annual show is three months from now." Talk a little bit about the opportunity here at AuditBoard and Beyond, and the spirit and philosophy of this show that we're at.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, it's like an iconic show. It's our seventh year. Our customers love it, our employees love it. With us here live, we have over 1200 users that came to the conference. We had over 10,000 people online watching the show today. We have tons of contents. We have over 40 different breakouts for people to learn more about audit, risk, compliance. We also have a lot of breakout sessions where they can network together, because what we've learned in the ecosystem we built here at AuditBoard is that our clients learn from each other. We're super excited to have everyone here and we're really excited about our future shock party tonight. We're looking forward to that.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, and I think, again, you have great momentum, over 300 million in ARR, a lot of new executives coming in and a lot of new energy in the company. Where do you see AuditBoard going in the GRC market into the future here?

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, we're just getting started. We got a great foundation. We believe we're the most complex connected risk platform AI-fueled for global companies. What we're focused on is investing in our platform. We're going to continue to expand the platform and people saw it today. We have AI innovations across audit, risk, and compliance. We've recently purchased FairNow, which is an exciting AI governance tool for our users. Then, we're going to expand globally. We're already in the UKNI and we're also in Germany, but I see that AuditBoard will be worldwide over the next 18 months, and we're going to continue to build on the best in class AI platform in the GRC space.

Rebecca Knight

>> Raul, this is not your first rodeo. You have led major scaling phases at PayCor, at ADP, and AdvancedMD. What are some of the lessons that you have learned from those experiences? Then, how are you going to put those into practice as you bring AuditBoard into its next chapter?

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, a couple things. First, you have to spend a lot of time talking to your clients and finding out what they want. Because what they want isn't always what you want, and you have to find a way to mutually benefit each other. What products do they want? We just had a user group with some of our top clients and we were asking, "Hey, what do you want?" Just because it's on our roadmap, it may not be the right thing and we can change. We got to build product for our clients. We have to be obsessed with the client user experience. Then, we have to be bold. We have a best-in-class platform, and we got to shout as loud as we can about how great AuditBoard is. We're going to pump and fuel money into marketing, in direct sales, and make sure the AuditBoard message goes worldwide.

Rob Strechay

>> I think that makes a lot of sense. When you start to look at it, it's interesting and I think there can be a lot of things you can share back and forth with your end users because you're also using it internally and you have AI. Help the folks at home understand, and the folks here when they go and watch this, understand how does that efficiency and AI help? How is that going to help them? The fact that you're using it internally as well.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, AI really helps in a couple different areas. It helps improve efficiency and reduce mundane tasks across our internal workforce. Just like we're trying to do for our auditors and our CISOs and our chief risk officers, we're trying to get rid of the mundane tasks no one wants to do through automation and through AI. I think about it from a coding perspective, we're going to be able to accelerate coding. We're going to be able to automate QA. From a marketing perspective, we can all get better scripts and better writing tools. We're all seeing the benefits of that. But across the enterprise, everyone benefits. We look at it as, "Hey, we're not looking to replace people with AI. We're looking to enhance people with AI." Actually, what we talk about in the company is, you're not going to get replaced by AI, but you could get replaced by someone who uses AI better than you, and so embrace the technology and deliver a better user experience for our customers.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, so just building off that for a second, what would be your advice to CEOs? Because we've talked about your internal studies and all of the... those 30% down implementations of AI over the last couple of months since July and the July version of it. But when you're talking to other CEOs and you're saying, "Hey, this is how you have to embrace AI, or why you should, and here's places to start." What are those kinds of conversations?

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, I think it's really critical that you remain committed to the initiatives that you set out on. It's very easy when you hit that curve and you have that trough of disillusionment, which is where some of the people are in the AI cycle right now. You got to fight through it, because it's going to get there, and you got to pull the people with you. I'd say, stay committed, focus on the things that matter, which are really tied to your value proposition to your customers. If you're leveraging AI to make that better, you're going to see the value, you're going to see the rewards. Once you get through the trough, then people are focused, they've learned, they see the benefits and they embrace it further. But it's about getting everyone using the tools. What we've seen is early on you have early adopters, right? Then, you have fast followers. It's about getting the laggards all the way through the organization.

Rebecca Knight

>> You said that the most important thing is to really know your customers, know what's on their mind, know what their pain points are, know what they're looking for. We know that spending around governance, risk, and compliance is surging right now as companies are really wrestling with AI and with geopolitical tensions. What are some of the conversations that you're having here at Audit and Beyond, and also in your day-to-day about what organizations are really worried about in this moment?

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, so it's really interesting. Risk and isolation is very dangerous. I've talked to a bunch of partners, a bunch of clients this week about that topic. That's why connected risk is so important because as a former CEO of a public company, typically you find out about risk when there's a problem and then you have to react to the risk. What we're trying to do is identify, "Hey, what is the potential risk upfront?" So a CEO and a CFO and a board of directors can allocate the right investment at the right time. You can't invest in everything to prevent risk, but you know which ones are the highest probability of failure, and that's what we're trying to solve for. Connect all the risks, provide a comprehensive dashboard to the CEO and CFO and the audit committee so they can help inform your investment decisions about where you're going to try to mitigate risk. That's what people are really focused on because there's so much... Six months ago it was all cyber. Now, it's all AI. Tomorrow, I'm not sure what it's going to be. It might be crypto, and it was supply chain a year ago. You've just seen this steady march. It's always something. Now, as someone that works in the category, we embrace this uncertainty. We're here to help. We have great tools to do that, but we want to inform our clients about where they should invest and so we can help them mitigate risk across their enterprise.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I think to me, you talk about uncertainty, and I think there's one thing that has been coming out, a little bit of uncertainty has been the fact that there's more IPOs going on. We've seen that people are getting ready, some have delayed, some have pushed forward. We've seen it definitely ramped up. You went through this yourself with PayCor and you talked about that from the stage earlier today. But when you look at why you became an AuditBoard customer at PayCor and what others can learn that are in that pre-IPO phase, I've gone through it twice, it's a hell of a lot of work. Unbelievable amount of work. What is it that they can learn and you can help, that AuditBoard and yourself can help them learn to set them up for long-term success?

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, I think the most important thing that people that are thinking about going public need to realize is that the IPO is an event, and being a public company is a process. You need tools that enable you to manage that process effectively. For us, AuditBoard enabled us to prepare for the audit, to prepare for Sarbanes-Oxley, to have a risk profile. All those were critical tools for our chief accounting executive, for our CISO, for our internal audit team, for our board of directors to feel confident that we could do it every quarter. I remember high-fiving with my boss in Wall Street, and he said, "Why do you look sad?" I said, "90 days from now I have a public call that I have to deliver results and our team has to do it." You can't do it without the tools. You really need tools to help.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, as you said, the IPO, it's the wedding and then you have the long marriage.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> That's right. Totally.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Every quarter you have to deliver it, and the risks change from quarter to quarter. Different things impact your business, different things are impacting the macro environment that you operate in. For us, if you can minimize the amount of manual work that has to be done and how it's automated and how it comes through for the team, it enables you to be more nimble, more flexible, and be able to have a long marriage as a public company.

Rebecca Knight

>> You have led many companies through big transformations. You are new to AuditBoard. Where do you focus? As we've established here at this interview and here today on theCUBE, this is a time of unprecedented change and uncertainty. You, Raul, where are you putting your time and energy?

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, so number one is defining connected risk. Everyone in GRC describes it differently, and we believe we have the only platform that can bring it all together. That's the number one thing we're focused on, is how do we bring risk together across the enterprise for all of our power users, the CAE, the CISO, the CRO, everyone in the enterprise. Then, get that information to the CFO and the CO. That's number one. Then, secondly is how do we tell our story worldwide? That is clearly, there's tons of opportunity. The regions across Europe and EMEA are just really starving for modern GRC solutions to handle modern needs that they have, and so those are probably the two biggest areas. Like, how do we bring connected risk to life for everyone in our ecosystem and how do we expand worldwide? Then, at the end of the day, we have to keep and maintain the culture that got us here. We have an amazing culture led by founders Dan and Jay, and then ultimately, Scott for the next five years. We had three amazing leaders of AuditBoard. I took over an amazing company. Usually, you start and you got all these problems. I don't have problems. We're just trying to accelerate. For me, it's one of the greatest assignments I've ever had because it's a great company with great people and a great culture, and I just have to steer it. We continue to accelerate and continue to grow. I think for us, we're just excited about the future.

Rob Strechay

>> When you look at it, again, I go back to your story about being the customer and things like that. When you look at that, I'm a product guy, I've done multiple startups and stuff like that. To your point, being customer focused and customer obsessed, always in my blood, and I hear that from everybody here. So good job because everybody's definitely... you can tell you have a great team here that's really doing that. When you look at that next level, because of the fact that the world is so complicated when it comes to audit and it comes to compliance and governance and regulation and risk. Do you see that bringing more voices into that, especially because, again, you're in Germany. Germany and the UK, very different regulatory things. The AI Act in EU is definitely changing stuff. Then, you go down to France and you have DORA, which is the financial services stuff. How do you see this? Because it would seem that AI can be a great advantage to you in this journey with that, but it's also connecting the people with that as well.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, no, we're really working globally with partners and they're really helping us educate us with their clients about what they need from us. Because compliance, risk, and audit are everywhere, but they're different flavors, to your point. We have to be able to meet those needs in those markets. Sometimes it's with our technology, but more times than not, it's with our technology wrapped with the service from one of our partners, because they're giving the transformation inside the client's office. We're providing the tool, they're providing the transformation. That combination is enabling us to be really successful in Germany, to be really successful in the UK. The needs are slightly different and they're really more focused on risk than the US clients are. I think that's how we're looking at it. Also, I think what's most important, AuditBoard's number one cultural landmark is customer obsession. We have worldwide customers. They're not just US customers, they're Germany customers, but most of our customers, over 50% of the Fortune 500 use AuditBoard. They're global companies and they're everywhere. We have to meet them where they are, and that's what we're focused on. Making sure that we are there. Every time a new regulation gets put into effect, we have to be there to help.

Rebecca Knight

>> There's so much strong, positive internal momentum at AuditBoard, new promotions and innovations, and obviously here, new product announcements, new acquisitions. When we are sitting here next year at Audit and Beyond 2026, what do you want to be able to say? What would success look like to you?

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, success is going to be we did it, and here's what we're doing for you in '27. My belief is that we should have a steady supply of new product innovations for our customers. Solving the problems that they face every day and continuing to meet them wherever they are in the globe. That's what success is. Continuing to be the gold standard across GRC for complex global companies, that's what AuditBoard is. That's what we want to continue to be. We don't want there to be any confusion about who the number one provider is in the GRC space. When we're here next year, I think you're going to be like, "Wow, you did it. You are killing the competition." I can say that because I'm private.

Rob Strechay

>> For now. We won't go down that path. But I think when you look at it and go, "Hey, we're going to grow, we're going to become even more important around the world." Like you said, we had GE Aircraft on earlier, or Aerospace, not aircraft, global, global company. When you start to look at this, that must help you look at, "Okay, well, we're helping all these companies. They're in Singapore, they're in Abu Dhabi, they're in France, they're in Italy." As the CEO, because you still have budgets and other things, how do you look at it and say, "Okay, this is the next part of the world we're going to go after."

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Great question. I think we're doing it two ways. One is, what regions can you expand from where you are? For us, we've been entrenched in UKNI and opened up Germany last year, but those markets give us great access to Benelux, the Nordics, and France. We will be expanding rapidly into those markets. But then, you also look at the demand curves and there is so much demand in APJ, and Singapore would be a natural home base. The Middle East is, as one partner told me today, there's unlimited money. That's always a good place to think about going. Then, South Africa, we've talked with a lot of folks in South Africa. They're starving for modern solutions and tools. You'll see us enter those markets in '26 with partners or with boots on the ground. We are still trying to figure all of that out, but there's so much demand in those markets that we're going to meet the demand. I think I would just say, the one thing, if I would say one thing that I'm trying to give to AuditBoard is ambition. We have great ambition and we are going to go for it. We are open for business, and I told that to all of our partners, we are not worried about competing. We want to compete across the globe.

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, we look forward to being back here next year and having you say, "Mic drop, we did it."

Raul Villar Jr.

>> We did it. Thank you so much.

Rob Strechay

>> Well, thank you.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> I appreciate it.

Rebecca Knight

>> This has been a really terrific conversation. Thank you, Raul.

Raul Villar Jr.

>> Yeah, thank you. Have a great day.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Rob Strechay. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Audit and Beyond. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.