Reputation management

Reputation management, with the key focus going out to securing and maintaining the trust of the stakeholders, is a strategic business process.

The company’s reputation is built on reactions provided by the stakeholders: if they believe that a company is acting and communicating in compliance with their needs, interests, values better than the competition, they will perceive this company positively, behave toward to it in favourable ways, and put out positive messages and recommendations to its respect. Moreover, the better the company meets their expectations over the long term, the more this reputation will establish itself firmly in their minds, thereby creating a safety net that will enable the business to better stand up to crisis situations.

For an enterprise, reputation constitutes an intangible asset which represents its past actions and describes its faculty to meet the expectations of its various stakeholders (e.g., on the ethical and social level, regarding the quality of its products and services), whilst allowing it to stand out on the market and to protect itself from the competition.

In a context where businesses owe it to themselves to satisfy their shareholders for whom ROI is at the heart of their concerns, reputation also plays a crucial role by dint of its proven financial impact. Indeed, even if it constitutes an intangible asset that is not recognised in the balance sheet as such, it impacts on the price of the company’s shares. In addition, a solid reputation help attract investors, new customers and talents, drive up the staff retention rate, facilitate the conclusion of partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and increase customers’ loyalty, the sales and the prices of the products and services.

The more the reputation will be well established, the more its benefits will be important. Thus, companies must regularly monitor their reputation. Several methods allow to measure it with PKI’s. One of them, for example, ranks yearly the reputation of the 100 most visible companies based on seven attributes: trust, good culture, ethics, citizenship, vision, growth, products and services.