Business opportunities and business development
In dynamic business environments business development managers must be able to identify and address new opportunities quickly and effectively. Business environments can best be understood as ecosystems consisting of interacting roles and exchanges focused on an industry segment. Value network modeling identifies "white spaces" of opportunity in the business ecosystem. These can give rise to new offerings or even new industry roles that compete with or complement current products and business activity.
Sales and marketing
The key focus of sales managers is sales generation. In both initial and recurring sales there are standard patterns of interactions among stakeholders that will lead to success. These patterns consist of certain dynamics and types of exchanges that can be easily defined using value network modeling. Deviations from these patterns will usually indicate a lowered probability of closing a sale, especially in a complex sales cycle.
Partnering for innovation
Industries such as pharmaceuticals, media, entertainment, bio- and nano-technology, and telecom rely on innovation partners to bring forward new products. Success depends on the ability to creatively partner in value networks around research, product development, and moving into full commercialization or implementation. Value network mapping models relationships as two-way value creating interactions.
Business analysis for investments
Investors are primarily interested in understanding the probability of the venture succeeding, and whether it is more attractive than other investment opportunities. Value network modeling supports business analysts and investors by (a) determining whether the stakeholder ecosystem of the planned venture is resilient, flexible, and encompassing enough to ensure success, (b) accurately identifying the value that will be created by the venture within the ecosystem, and c) defining the exact nature of alliances and relationships required for success.
Supply chains and value delivery systems
Resource deployment and time-to-market advantage are dependent on the quality, coherence, and vitality of the relevant supply chain value networks and business webs. The value network approach can help visualize the health of supply and production networks as well as value delivery models.
Fast-track process redesign
Product and service offerings are constantly changing - and so are the processes to innovate, design, manufacture, and deliver them. Multiple, inter-dependent, and concurrent processes can be too complex or non linear for traditional process mapping, but can be analyzed very quickly with value network modeling.
Project management
Value network modeling helps mitigate the risks of project management in three areas. The first is clarifying roles and expectations. The second is the explicit monitoring and quality control of intangible deliverables, such as support actions and key information exchanges. The third area is determining and improving the quality and degree of collaboration within the project.
Organizational restructure
Change is all there is: mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, expansion to new markets, new product groups, new partners, new roles and functions. When relationships change so do roles, value interactions, and workflows. Visualizing the changes as value networks helps to more effectively deploy existing resources without unduly disrupting reporting structures.
Knowledge networks and communities of practice
Understanding transactional dynamics is vital for purposeful networks of all kinds, including those focused on creating knowledge value or building skill and expertise. Modeling helps knowledge networks and communities of practice negotiate for resources and demonstrate their value to different groups within the organization.
Talent management
Talent managers have been caught in a tight squeeze to meet the changing demands of the workplace. Agile resource allocation is essential for success, yet at the same time there must be transparency and fairness in how people are deployed. Most HR and ERP systems (and even performance review systems) are designed to support one worker holding only one job. Yet, today's knowledge worker plays multiple roles in an organization. Value network modeling helps meet that challenge by providing a role-based structure for managing the flexible workforce. See The Nature of Collaborative Work and also Roles and Participants in the Mapping chapter.
CFOs and intangible asset management
The CFO recognizes that a broad range of financial and non-financial measures are useful for managing the company. In determining the true value drivers of the business an understanding of financial and non-financial information is essential, as is an understanding of tangible and intangible value (intellectual and competitive). Value network modeling and analytics provide a way to visualize, analyze, and manage tangible and intangible value drivers that are crucial for comprehending and improving company value creation.
Marketing and website design
How accurately does your website communicate to the world what your organization is about? Your website is the place where people gain a first impression of your organization. It also provides a view of how you work within your industry value network. After all - your website is your company's business card. Value network modeling can quickly reveal how accurately your Internet presence conveys the purpose of your company - from brand and identity through products and services, to Web 2.0 communities and support, and even to the level of semantic web elements. See Website Analysis in the Advanced Analysis chapter.
Workspace design
Workspace design is rapidly becoming a critical issue for organizations as they seek to not only optimize the use of physical resources (e.g., office building, office layout, and infrastructure), but also find more effective forms of organizational design. Value network modeling provides an effective perspective for evaluating workspace and designing new solutions in order to design workspace to support the way work gets done. See Designing Productive Workspaces for Mobile Workers - case study, Camille Venezia, Verna Allee, and Oliver Schwabe (pdf).
