Credibility Management

Establishing the necessary trust and confidence between business partners is to a very large extent a subjective issue affected by the reputation and image of the organisations or enterprises in question. This refers to the overall perceived credibility, which is essential both in the traditional business as well as in the business practices with strong ICT penetration and network visibility. 

In the traditional business environment credibility was normally built on individual correspondence and face-to-face relations and in the end earned through repetition of successful business transactions between the supplier and the customer. In the eBusiness environment the issue of credibility is often at stake in a different fashion. Business transactions may be initiated within portals established in commercial networks based on the information available through the same channel that the business transaction is supposed to take place in.  Credibility is questioned instantaneously the case of doubtful first  impressions of the network  or where there problems with delivery and payments are encountered the credibility could be lost in a few days.

Credibility administration is essential and deals with all areas of the business operation, e.g.: communicating with the suppliers of products and services, managing the internal processes and resources, presenting the output to clients, working with support networks and complying with the rules and constraints of the environment. The issue is credibility within different kind of partnerships.

In the business domain best practices for credibility improvement have been developed in the different areas of the operation, ranging from the rigid rules of financial accounting and the guiding norms of ISO/IEC 17799 on information security management to frameworks with even more extensive coverage. Constructions like the ISO 9000 framework of quality management have been used as milestones in such work. These represent examples of well recognised administration tools which can be utilised to raise the level of credibility for the operation and for the transparency of sound business behaviour to the many stakeholders in question.

Even though these tools are mainly utilised by larger enterprises, there are means for smaller ones to take advantage of the guidelines provided by management standards and best practice examples, thus improving their image and differentiation opportunity. SMEs will need to be informed about the opportunity and to be provided with support.

The credibility domain is highly related to security and cyber identity issues and the overall assurance issue as well as the agreements domain. These domains are interlinked, support each other, and require parallel attention when studied and applied.