The Trust Index – Introduction

Welcome to The Trust Index – a VRM (Vendor Relationship Management*) tool that aims to help individuals differentiate between organisations that they should trust with their personal information, and those who they might not be so comfortable with.

* VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties. CRM systems until now have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for both vendors and customers — in ways that don’t require the former to “lock in” the latter.

The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.

The chart below shows a sample output from the Trust Index – showing an overall Trust score and then the breakdown by component parts.