Reuters has 2,300 editorial staff in 196 bureaux around the world. As the world’s largest multimedia news agency, IT is at the core of its business. Get the technology wrong and the brand suffers.
‘Both disaster recovery and business continuity plans are essential to ensure we maintain our services,’ says David Lister, chief information officer (CIO) at Reuters. ‘It’s not just about being able to recover after an incident, but ensuring that the services we supply on a daily basis meet the standards of service people expect of us, and that links back to brand reputation.’
To Lister, maintaining Reuters’ reputation starts with the brand. ‘From a risk/corporate reputation perspective, we need to ensure that we have the right levels of policy to ensure we’re not putting our corporate reputation at risk,’ says Lister.
‘And that stretches from compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley to the way we deal with suppliers from an ethical trading perspective, all the way through to payment terms and being compliant with payment conditions.’
Reputation is also linked to how Reuters interacts with customers. ‘We continually put in place processes and capabilities that make us easier to do business with,’ says Lister. ‘We protect, stand up for and uphold the values that our brand stands for.’
There are dozens of ways bad news can leak out of a company and ruin its reputation. Should a CIO keep a tight rein on all electronic communication?
‘We would not want to put constraints on people,’ says Lister. ‘There will always be people who are less happy about things from individual perspectives. I think it’s wrong to try to control that. The less you demonstrate you trust people the more negative behaviour you’ll generate.’ To Lister, it is more important to create a positive culture than to act as a policeman.
When it comes to working with suppliers, Lister thinks good relationships are based on mutual development and growth. ‘If you’re known to be good to do business with, then, guess what, you get the partner’s best people working on your team. You become attractive to do business with.’
Lister says that investing in corporate reputation leads to a virtuous circle. ‘Good relationships generate great reputations, which attract good people, which attract good suppliers, which attract innovative thinking and investment,’ says Lister.
‘You’re not doing this for altruistic means, you’re doing it because you’re trying to grow shareholder value, and a major part of that is by growing, building, developing and maintaining your reputation as a business.’
reader comments