Incentivizing Trustworthy Technologies

As data privacy and security threats become more perilous, the market and society alike have acknowledged that digital trust is not only an indicator of an organization’s good faith effort to protect the users but a dominant business issue that defines an organization’s relationship with every stakeholder. Since 1972, SAP has transformed business operations through its enterprise resource planning software. Increasing diversity in the nature of threat actors, regulations, and mounting significance of transparency in communication and other aspects of the organization’s operations, assets, and individuals has made it crucial for SAP to define and lay down a path that it can uniformly and universally follow to build and retain the trust of all stakeholders, including the customer, government, workforce, and society. 

The team was given the task to assess how SAP can build and sustain trust as a technology leader in the market. The team focused on analyzing the existing approach of all the market stakeholders towards defining and evaluating trust, understanding the trust lifecycle, identifying risks distinctly associated with digital trust, and proposing a comprehensive trust measurement criterion. Through qualitative data analysis of secondary research and interviews with experts, the Capstone team recommended a quantifiable framework for SAP to a) establish trust through improved customer interface and transparent communication strategy, b) maintain and reinforce trust in its security and privacy processes through the adoption of proposed Knowledge Performance Indicators, risk mitigation strategies and c) create or join initiatives that indicate SAP’s commitment to building a trusted ecosystem for its stakeholders.