TRUSTcast’s purpose is to bring insights from trust executives and leaders from around the world into your homes and share them in an atmosphere of a relaxed conversation. In Episode 2, we are hosting Elena Kvochko, the founder of the Chief Trust Office at SAP headquarters. In addition to her role in SAP, Elena teaches at Cornell University, her work was published in many reputable outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Harvard Business Review. In 2021 Elena was also named as a top inventor in Bank of America and was recognised as Fortunes 40 under 40.
We have discussed trust, the role of the Chief Trust Office at SAP, and how can ways of building trust be adjusted to enable “synchronised evolution“ with industry and customers. Elena also emphasized the role of collaborative culture development to enable open dialogue and transparency, and how SAP is helping shape a new generation of experts in trust.
“Trust builds confidence that commitments will be kept”
“We created Chief Trust Office in 2020 to provide support for our customers”
Chief Trust Office is dedicated to strengthening trust with our customers, through seamless communication and fostering transparency while shaping the global security narrative. In the work of this office, SAP works on security, privacy, and compliance.
“We believe in overcommunicating with customers”
SAP’s Trust Office is publishing more information than ever before in order to help customers make informed decisions.
“Automation is the key direction. Scaling through manual efforts can only lead you so far”
We are providing automated ways – experimenting with audio and video-based meetings. This enables us to observe everything customer wants to know and respond to that.
“The Chief Trust Officer signifies what drives today’s business climate, which is accountability and transparency”
Before the internet, customers judged companies based on the quality of their products and companies measured their success based on their profits. Now, this is not enough because companies process the most sensitive data, so there is much more at stake.
“Profits and losses are no longer the only measures of success for the industry, it’s also about ethics and the trust “
On the question about the way this is done, Elena says:
“We are evolving together with the industry, and we evolve together with the customers”
SAP has recognised the need to have a dynamic response and be aware of landscape evolving.
“We want to help shape the capacities of future generations of experts”
We are focused on working together with universities, establishing partnerships, fund high school programs and scholarships. We are proactively seeking to find new talent and we have opened unlimited internship opportunities with some of our interns already being permanently employed.
“Remember that culture is defined by everyone”
Establishing a vision requires the support of the Trust Officer but also those beyond the C-suite and beyond the manger’s role. Culture needs to celebrate success but also embrace new ideas. This means we want to uplift employees to ask difficult questions and voice their ideas.
Author: Dr Adela Drozdibob
Publication date: 30th May 2022, QUT, Brisbane, Australia
Technological and design contribution: Anisa Hobaya