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Manual vs Centralized Tracking in Operational Due Diligence
Why manual processes persist in ODD and how centralized systems help teams improve oversight, audit trails, and long-term governance.
Dasseti
Feb 17, 2026
Operational due diligence is built on documentation and oversight. Yet in many firms, the tracking of that work remains fragmented and manual.
Tracking often relies on email threads, spreadsheets, shared drives, and personal reminders. As coverage grows, these manual methods become harder to control. A centralized approach brings questionnaires, documents, findings, and reviews into one connected system, improving visibility and strengthening oversight across the entire review cycle.
The difference between manual and centralized tracking is not about collecting more data. It is about visibility, consistency, and control.
What manual tracking looks like in ODD teams
Most ODD teams start with a manual approach because it evolves naturally alongside the investment process.
This typically looks like:- Questionnaires sent by email or file share
- Responses stored as PDFs, Word files, or Excel spreadsheets
- Follow-ups tracked in inboxes or personal task lists
- Spreadsheets to track status and deadlines
- Separate documents to record findings and conclusions.
This approach works when coverage is limited and reviews are infrequent, but as coverage grows and complexity increases, seeing the full picture becomes a challenge.
Where manual DDQ tracking creates pressure for ODD teams
As volume increases, the strain shows up in small but persistent ways.
Status tracking becomes time-consuming. Understanding where each manager sits in a review cycle often requires checking several places. Progress is generally known, but it is not visible at a glance, and confirming status takes longer than it should.
Follow-ups are harder to coordinate. Chasing missing or partial responses depends heavily on individual inboxes and reminders rather than a shared view of ownership and progress.
Changes over time are difficult to spot. Comparing this year’s responses to prior reviews usually involves opening documents side by side and relying on memory to work out what has actually changed.
Findings live outside the source data. Issues are recorded, but often disconnected from the responses or documents that triggered them, which makes reviews harder to evidence later.
Whilst none of these things prevent due diligence from happening, together they slow the process down and make your team’s job harder than it needs to be.
What centralized tracking looks like in ODD
Centralized tracking is not about collecting more data or enforcing rigid workflows, it is about keeping all diligence activity connected.
With a centralized approach:
- Questionnaires, documents, responses, notes, and findings sit against the same manager record
- Teams can see what has been sent, what has come back, what is under review, and what has been flagged
- Prior reviews remain available in context rather than buried in folders or archived drives
The work itself stays the same; what changes is how it is tracked.
Why tracking chaos is a risk issue, not just an efficiency issue
Tracking chaos is often framed as a productivity issue. But for ODD teams, it also affects governance.
When tracking is fragmented:
- It is harder to demonstrate consistency in oversight
- Audit trails take longer to assemble
- Risk themes across managers are less visible
- Knowledge becomes tied to individuals rather than the team
Centralized tracking supports better oversight by making change easier to see and reviews easier to evidence, without adding more manual work.
DDQ centralization does not mean rigidity
A common concern is that centralizing tracking means standardizing every review.
However, effective centralized approaches still allow teams to tailor questionnaires by strategy, asset class, or risk focus, capture qualitative judgement alongside structured data, and run ad-hoc reviews when events occur. Flexibility is maintained, but consistency improves.
The structure supports the workflow rather than dictating it.
Learn more about DDQ design best practices in our on-demand webinar >>
A more controlled approach to ODD tracking
Manual tracking is familiar and flexible, but it does not scale well. Centralized tracking is not about replacing judgement or relationships. It is about creating a clear, defensible record of how operational risk is assessed and monitored over time.
For ODD teams looking to reduce tracking chaos, the focus is not on doing diligence differently, but on tracking it in a way that is clearer, more consistent, and easier to maintain over time as coverage expands and expectations around oversight continue to rise.