Value chain analysis (VCA) is a method used to identify a company's potential sources of competitive advantage. It examines the range of activities involved in creating and delivering a product or service, including inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and services. VCA involves mapping a company's value chain, analyzing costs and differentiation within each activity, and comparing the company to competitors. The goal is to find ways to reduce costs or create greater customer value at each stage in order to strengthen competitive position.
Competition is getting more intense. Globalisation has finally arrived in every country of the world. It is crucial to know your own strengths
and weaknesses as well as these of your „enemies.“
Companies that want to be “ahead of the competition“ must have a
well-performing radar system in order to analyse their competitors and market developments, and to be able to identify relevant opportunities or threats on time .
Competitive Intelligence is the art of always staying one step ahead of
the competition.
Slides from a recent workshop @Found.ation:
"How to create a successful e-shop"
“Track your competitors and adjust your strategy”
George Giannakeas
Marketing and Product Director e-FOOD.gr
george@e-food.gr
@gioris
Competitive Intelligence for Market Researchers: an Exercise-Driven, Interact...Arik Johnson
Introduction to Competitive Intelligence Principles Workshop, Designed for a Market Research Audience and Delivered at the 2006 Institute for International Research (IIR) Market Research Event in Los Angeles, California October 22
This paper briefly describes what competitive intelligence is, then proposes a competitive intelligence initiative along with suggestions for a structural framework, scope, and individual skills and tools necessary to be successful.
Training Material - Competitive Intelligence - The Life Blood Of Strategy - A...Sadashiv Borgaonkar
This is the training material of Competitive Intelligence. 136 Pages.
Competitive Intelligence is the life blood of strategy
The Ultimate Goal Of Each Intelligence Process Is To Facilitate Decision – Making That Leads To Action.
Eventually, All Intelligence Terms Refer To Using Systematic Methods To Collect, Analyze And Disseminate Information That Supports Decision - Making
Competitive Intelligence (CI) Is Regarded As The Broadest Scope Of Intelligence Activities Covering The Whole External Operating Environment Of The Company And Targeting All Levels Of Decision – Making.
Competitive Intelligence is critical to any company striving to make their product deliver the value customers expect. As a Product Manager, you want to keep a holistic view of both your client’s opinion, desire and thoughts on new development, combined with a perspective on what your competition will be up to next. After all, the competition has smart Product Managers who may have discovered an important service or product angle those customers are going to want.
With social media in a mature phase, can’t you just rely on Twitter Feeds, news aggregators, and information from the odd LinkedIn Group? Is that enough? What else should you be doing to stay ahead of you competitors?
Join our guest speaker, Zena Applebaum, of Bennet Jones LLP, for a practical discussion about where to look for competitive intelligence (ethically), how to collect it, the questions you should be asking, who to ask, and how best to use the intel once you have it
Competitive Intelligence Needs-Assessment: Asking the right questions ValueNotes
Competitive Intelligence (CI) plays a critical role in formulating an
organisation’s business strategy. It can make the difference between
winning and losing, survival and death. However, CI can only live up to this
expectation, if it addresses the right questions. Right answers to wrong
questions, will be wrong for the organization. What questions should the
organization ask in order to win? The answer to this requires clear logical
thinking on the part of both, the decision-makers who will use the
intelligence to further their business objectives, and competitive
intelligence analysts who will provide actionable inputs to facilitate the
decisions. Going about CI needs assessment in a systematic fashion helps
you hit the bull’s-eye.
State of application performance management in the Indian BFSI sector ValueNotes
Almost every participant in the BFSI sector identifies application
uptime as a critical metric of application performance and recognises
the need for those applications to function optimally i.e. increase
productivity while reducing costs. But this study showed that
organisations did not have defined standards of measurement and
did not consider industry benchmarks as relevant indicators.
White Paper - leveraging Customer Inputs to Accelerate Business ObjectivesValueNotes
Successful companies place the customer at the heart of their business, and base their activities and decisions on the customer’s needs and preferences.
Competition is getting more intense. Globalisation has finally arrived in every country of the world. It is crucial to know your own strengths
and weaknesses as well as these of your „enemies.“
Companies that want to be “ahead of the competition“ must have a
well-performing radar system in order to analyse their competitors and market developments, and to be able to identify relevant opportunities or threats on time .
Competitive Intelligence is the art of always staying one step ahead of
the competition.
Slides from a recent workshop @Found.ation:
"How to create a successful e-shop"
“Track your competitors and adjust your strategy”
George Giannakeas
Marketing and Product Director e-FOOD.gr
george@e-food.gr
@gioris
Competitive Intelligence for Market Researchers: an Exercise-Driven, Interact...Arik Johnson
Introduction to Competitive Intelligence Principles Workshop, Designed for a Market Research Audience and Delivered at the 2006 Institute for International Research (IIR) Market Research Event in Los Angeles, California October 22
This paper briefly describes what competitive intelligence is, then proposes a competitive intelligence initiative along with suggestions for a structural framework, scope, and individual skills and tools necessary to be successful.
Training Material - Competitive Intelligence - The Life Blood Of Strategy - A...Sadashiv Borgaonkar
This is the training material of Competitive Intelligence. 136 Pages.
Competitive Intelligence is the life blood of strategy
The Ultimate Goal Of Each Intelligence Process Is To Facilitate Decision – Making That Leads To Action.
Eventually, All Intelligence Terms Refer To Using Systematic Methods To Collect, Analyze And Disseminate Information That Supports Decision - Making
Competitive Intelligence (CI) Is Regarded As The Broadest Scope Of Intelligence Activities Covering The Whole External Operating Environment Of The Company And Targeting All Levels Of Decision – Making.
Competitive Intelligence is critical to any company striving to make their product deliver the value customers expect. As a Product Manager, you want to keep a holistic view of both your client’s opinion, desire and thoughts on new development, combined with a perspective on what your competition will be up to next. After all, the competition has smart Product Managers who may have discovered an important service or product angle those customers are going to want.
With social media in a mature phase, can’t you just rely on Twitter Feeds, news aggregators, and information from the odd LinkedIn Group? Is that enough? What else should you be doing to stay ahead of you competitors?
Join our guest speaker, Zena Applebaum, of Bennet Jones LLP, for a practical discussion about where to look for competitive intelligence (ethically), how to collect it, the questions you should be asking, who to ask, and how best to use the intel once you have it
Competitive Intelligence Needs-Assessment: Asking the right questions ValueNotes
Competitive Intelligence (CI) plays a critical role in formulating an
organisation’s business strategy. It can make the difference between
winning and losing, survival and death. However, CI can only live up to this
expectation, if it addresses the right questions. Right answers to wrong
questions, will be wrong for the organization. What questions should the
organization ask in order to win? The answer to this requires clear logical
thinking on the part of both, the decision-makers who will use the
intelligence to further their business objectives, and competitive
intelligence analysts who will provide actionable inputs to facilitate the
decisions. Going about CI needs assessment in a systematic fashion helps
you hit the bull’s-eye.
State of application performance management in the Indian BFSI sector ValueNotes
Almost every participant in the BFSI sector identifies application
uptime as a critical metric of application performance and recognises
the need for those applications to function optimally i.e. increase
productivity while reducing costs. But this study showed that
organisations did not have defined standards of measurement and
did not consider industry benchmarks as relevant indicators.
White Paper - leveraging Customer Inputs to Accelerate Business ObjectivesValueNotes
Successful companies place the customer at the heart of their business, and base their activities and decisions on the customer’s needs and preferences.
Value chain methodology: Potential use by the Ethiopian Livestock Feed (ELF) ...ILRI
Presented by Getachew Legese (EIAR) at the inception meeting for the ‘Fodder and feed in livestock value chains in Ethiopia’ project, ILRI, Addis Ababa, 21-22 February 2012
The Evolution of Digital Control Towers in Supply ChainTredence Inc
Corporations today want to leverage useful applications of the supply chain control tower. Organizations have copious amounts of data across their supply chain and related functions.
Learn more: https://www.tredence.com/solutions/supply-chain-control-tower
Erp and value chain management presentation priyansh kesarwaniPriyansh Kesarwani
Erp and value chain management presentation made by priyansh kesarwani
ERP, or enterprise resource planning, is a modular software system designed to integrate the main functional areas of an organization's business processes into a unified system.
An ERP system includes core software components, often called modules, that focus on essential business areas, such as finance and accounting, HR, production and materials management, customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management. Organizations choose which core modules to use based on which are most important to their particular business.
Expert opinion and guidelines on supply chain for iscea ptak prizeMd Asif Imrul
Supply chain management is a highly-detailed system used by small and large organizations likely to get products to consumers, from obtaining raw materials, manufacturing and delivering the final product to the customer. A well-organized supply chain management system involves optimizing operations functionality to be fast and efficient.
We're truly honored for getting the great opportunity to serve the CSCA & CSCM participants
Achieving IT Strategic Directives When Evaluating a New Promotional Content E...Cognizant
By embracing a collaborative assessment model to evaluate technology platforms, life sciences organizations can better address cross-functional stakeholder needs.
Driving Supply Chain Excellence Report -18 June 2015Lora Cecere
Executive Overview
Growth is slowing and the complexity in today’s supply chain is unprecedented. No two centers of excellence are the same, and no two supply chains are alike. There are different drivers and obstacles to building and running a Center of Excellence. However, if done right, the organization rates itself as more aligned, proactive and agile. The high-level results from our study are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Centers of Excellence Infographic
Based on our qualitative interviews with clients, we find that these seven drivers to build a Center of Excellence:
• Increase in the Importance of Supply Chain Management. As growth slows, and the global multinational organization matures, more and more companies are interested in driving supply chain excellence. The reasons are many; but, at the top of the list is improving reliability in the face of volatility. How so? Demand volatility is increasing and supplier viability is growing more fragile. Driving reliability in global operations in the face of these challenges is fundamental to defining and executing supply chain excellence.
• Building of Global Teams and the Development of Supply Chain Talent. With the shortage of students from academia, and the retirement of the first- and second-generation supply chain pioneers, more and more companies are developing and executing programs to build supply chain talent. There is a shortage of mid-management talent with pressure on planning job retention. There is a limited supply of supply chain knowledge workers: leaders that are technologically savvy, analytical problem solvers, and astute in business processes.
• Continuation of Work on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). When companies complete a large ERP project, there is a strong impetus to get the value from the investment and ensure technology usage. The focus of the Center of Excellence often becomes an extension of the global implementation team.
• Metrics and Implementation of Analytics. While the management of supply chain excellence sounds easy, it is not. The management of order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes and the supply chain execution processes are easier because they are well-defined. Most companies struggle with the definition of planning and the use of new forms of analytics.
• Network Design and the Orchestration of Flows. Most companies start on their supply chain design journey to save costs in logistics. With the increasing cost of transportation, and the fragility of freight networks, network design for transportation and logistics networks is paramount. One client likened it to “minting money.”
• Testing of New Technologies. Cloud technologies. Supply chain operating networks. The Internet of Things. 3D Printing. New forms of analytics. The list of technology and process disruptors could go on and on. While most companies feel stuck in their existing, and more traditional, processes they want to understand and explore technology
Similar to Mtm11 white paper value chain analysis (20)
How Energy & Utilities Must Adopt Intelligence Best Practices to Compete Agai...IntelCollab.com
How Energy & Utilities Must Adopt Intelligence Best Practices to Compete Against Disruptive Developments. This episode of the IntelCollab webinar series aired on May 25, 2016.
This presentation by Morris Kleiner (University of Minnesota), was made during the discussion “Competition and Regulation in Professions and Occupations” held at the Working Party No. 2 on Competition and Regulation on 10 June 2024. More papers and presentations on the topic can be found out at oe.cd/crps.
This presentation was uploaded with the author’s consent.
0x01 - Newton's Third Law: Static vs. Dynamic AbusersOWASP Beja
f you offer a service on the web, odds are that someone will abuse it. Be it an API, a SaaS, a PaaS, or even a static website, someone somewhere will try to figure out a way to use it to their own needs. In this talk we'll compare measures that are effective against static attackers and how to battle a dynamic attacker who adapts to your counter-measures.
About the Speaker
===============
Diogo Sousa, Engineering Manager @ Canonical
An opinionated individual with an interest in cryptography and its intersection with secure software development.
This presentation, created by Syed Faiz ul Hassan, explores the profound influence of media on public perception and behavior. It delves into the evolution of media from oral traditions to modern digital and social media platforms. Key topics include the role of media in information propagation, socialization, crisis awareness, globalization, and education. The presentation also examines media influence through agenda setting, propaganda, and manipulative techniques used by advertisers and marketers. Furthermore, it highlights the impact of surveillance enabled by media technologies on personal behavior and preferences. Through this comprehensive overview, the presentation aims to shed light on how media shapes collective consciousness and public opinion.
Sharpen existing tools or get a new toolbox? Contemporary cluster initiatives...Orkestra
UIIN Conference, Madrid, 27-29 May 2024
James Wilson, Orkestra and Deusto Business School
Emily Wise, Lund University
Madeline Smith, The Glasgow School of Art
Have you ever wondered how search works while visiting an e-commerce site, internal website, or searching through other types of online resources? Look no further than this informative session on the ways that taxonomies help end-users navigate the internet! Hear from taxonomists and other information professionals who have first-hand experience creating and working with taxonomies that aid in navigation, search, and discovery across a range of disciplines.
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Introducing Acorn Recovery as a Service, a simple, fast, and secure managed disaster recovery (DRaaS) by IP ServerOne. A DR solution that helps restore your IT infra within minutes.
1. BCG Growth/Share Portfolio Matrix
ITOTW 1
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 1 of 9
Value Chain Analysis
Intelligence Collaborative - Mastering the Methods Series
2. Value Chain Analysis
This White Paper is #11 in a series of intelligence methods being offered to members of the
Intelligence Collaborative. It was developed by Dr. Craig S. Fleisher to provide a concise
overview of how to apply key intelligence methods to support analysis. Although every
effort is made to ensure that the information is accurate and fit for its purpose, the author
and Aurora WDC make no implied or explicit warranties as to its applicability or use in
your particular work context.
Please direct any questions about this paper to its author at the following:
Craig S. Fleisher, Ph.D.
Aurora WDC
Email: craig.fleisher@aurorawdc.com
http://IntelCollab.com
Other White Papers are available on a regular basis from http://IntelCollab.com. Related
Methods in the series are:
Win/Loss Analysis
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 2 of 9
4. Value Chain Analysis
Abstract
Value chain analysis (VCA) is used to identify a company’s potential sources of economic advantage and
to achieve an optimal allocation of resources. For our purposes, a value chain can be defined as the full
range of sequential organizational activities that are needed to take products and services from the
original idea all the way through the different stages of production. This includes the physical
transformation and inputs of various producer services, delivery, and post-sale services to final
customers. Value chains within a company or industry are actually composed of a specific model of
performance characterizing the discrete stages of organizational value creation.
(Source: Porter, 1985)
The Method’s Primary Value
The unique strength of VCA is that it can be used to help companies bridge the strategic gaps between
their capabilities - aspects of the business that employ resources effectively and perform well - and
opportunities and threats in their competitive environments. Hence, VCA’s two main objectives are to
identify opportunities to secure cost advantages and to create customer-satisfying product/service
attribute differentiation. Cost advantages can be achieved by reconfiguring the entire value chain to
lessen overall costs or the costs of any of the key activities along the chain. Likewise, differentiation can
be achieved through value chain reconfiguration or by delivering innovative ways of generating higher
value from a particular activity or set of linked activities.
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 4 of 9
5. Value Chain Analysis
Overview of the Method
Value chains are more complex than the simplified version shown on the prior page. In many cases, the
input and output chains comprise more than one channel, and these channels can supply more than a
single market. Porter classifies all these activities into two main categories.
1. Primary activities include the following (three of these primary activities are product-related):
• Inbound logistics are activities in which resources are acquired for later processing by the
business, including such areas as inventory warehousing and handling.
• Operations are activities that transform the gathered inputs into the final product or service.
• Outbound logistics are distribution-oriented activities such as logistics and shipping.
Two of these activities are market-related:
• Marketing and sales are all the activities designed to communicate the product’s or service’s
benefits to consumers, such as marketing communications, pricing, and channel management.
• Services include post-sale support activities.
2. Support activities include all the important activities that cut across the company’s primary activities
and provide ongoing infrastructure assistance for the rest of the organization. These activities differ
by industry and company, but they generally include the following:
• Firm infrastructure includes administrative support activities covering the range of primary
activities, such as accounting, legal, planning, and all forms of stakeholder relations, such as
government and public affairs, communications, community investment, and investor relations.
• Human capital management includes aspects of the company and its human capital
enhancement process, such as recruitment, incentive systems, motivation, training, promotion,
and industrial/labor relations.
• Procurement includes activities such as funding, subcontracting, supplier management, and
specification.
• Systems and technology includes infrastructure facets of the business that help design, develop,
and/or deliver products more effectively and efficiently, such as engineering, R&D, and
information technology.
Where the Method Fits in Planning and Strategy
From the company’s perspective, VCA is a highly practical tool for understanding its strengths and
weaknesses. From an industry perspective, VCA provides a good understanding of the company’s
competitive position relative to key customers and suppliers. VCA also helps you understand the nature
and sustainability of the company’s resources and capabilities and what new resources and capabilities
it might require to be competitive in the future. For those who perform a SWOT analysis as part of their
insight development process, VCA provides a much better real-world sense of what is really a strength
or a weakness.
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 5 of 9
6. Value Chain Analysis
VCA encourages the company to comprehensively review all the activities that deliver value to the
customer. It is also more inclusive of the complex economic cost drivers that affect customer value.
These include structural drivers (scale, scope, experience, technology, complexity) and executional
drivers (management style, total quality management, plant layout, capacity utilization, product
configuration, vertical links with suppliers and customers).
For an organization to develop and execute a successful product, it is essential that it add value in each
activity that the product goes through during the life cycle. The highest value is achieved in the product
development process by adding value in each and every stage. Doing that requires each stage and
synchronization between stages to be effective. VCA helps make it clear that an appropriate
organizational structure and processes are required. These will contain the required functional
departments to perform these activities and a proper communication approach to synchronize the
activities of these functional units efficiently.
Cautions with Applying this Method
Despite the strengths of VCA, its usefulness is being challenged by the radical changes that information
technologies have wrought. A growing school of management thought asserts that traditional value
chains oriented around vertical linkages cannot constantly reinvent value at the speed required for
successful strategy execution and meeting customer responsiveness demands.
Traditional VCA was developed to help you understand physical assets and flows. It may not be as
appropriate to employ for competition based on intellectual assets and services. That being said, newer
conceptual developments are happening in the broader scholarship. They increasingly allow for
functional modification of the traditional VCA for emerging modes of competitiveness, including value
net analysis, value grid analysis, value migration, value constellation analysis, value stream mapping,
value shop analysis, and service value chains.
Managing value chains in an information communication and technology environment requires the
inclusion of economic realities that are not explicitly addressed by original versions of the VCA model
(like Porter’s). VCA treats information as a supporting element in the company’s strategy. At best, it is
only part of a secondary activity. Recent models such as the virtual value chain and value web
management treat information as a separate and distinct value-creating factor that must be managed
separately but together with the enduring physical value chain.
VCA also has been criticized for being too simplistic because many of its qualitative prescriptions are
difficult to implement. The most prominent shortcoming is that they require significant amounts of
resources. Effective VCA requires a large investment in benchmarking, customer and stakeholder
research, competitive analysis, and industry structure analysis, often using data that is not freely or
easily available. Conducting VCA might be straightforward in theory, but it is relatively difficult and time-
consuming to apply for maximum and relevant effect. This is a key reason why many companies do not
choose to exploit it in their ongoing analysis activities.
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 6 of 9
7. Value Chain Analysis
Furthermore, most of a company’s internal accounting data is incompatible with the analytical
dimensions of VCA for several reasons. Traditional management accounting systems rarely, if ever, do
the following:
• Collect data related to value-creating activities. Instead, they collect data related to
product/service and period costs.
• Collect period costs by product or service, making it difficult to accurately assign overhead costs
to value-creating processes.
• Collect data on cost drivers. Departmental budgets are rarely an accurate source for
determining the actual cost of value-creating activities.
• Enable transfer prices and arbitrary cost allocation of traditional management accounting
systems to appropriately encompass the synergies created by horizontal links in the company’s
value chain or the vertical links in the industry’s value system.
Applying the Method
Conducting a successful VCA requires judgment, attention to detail, competitive knowledge, and
quantitative analysis. Understanding the company’s industry structure and, more importantly, aligning
this knowledge with the company’s capabilities, are intrinsic to crafting successful strategies.
The VCA process begins with an internal analysis of the company’s value chain, followed by an external
competitive analysis of the industry value system. It concludes by integrating these two analyses to
identify and create a strategy that can potentially sustain competitive advantage.
Step 1: Define the Company’s Strategic Business Units
The first level of review draws boundaries around the business’s various segments. This is necessary
because the different segments of the business will have different sources of competitive advantage
that require different strategies.
Step 2: Identify the Company’s Critical Value-Creating Activities
For companies that haven’t adopted ABA, Porter offers several distinctions that define value-creating
activities. These companies are those that
• Have different economic structures
• Contribute to a large or growing percentage of total costs
• Contribute to or have a strong probability of contributing to product/service differentiation
Step 3: Conduct an Internal Cost Analysis
Companies can achieve cost advantages and better margins by either reducing the cost of individual
value chain (VC) activities or reconfiguring the VC. Reconfiguration means structural changes such as a
new production process, new distribution channels, or a different sales approach such as direct-to-
consumer approaches instead of owning retail outlets. An internal cost analysis is composed of the
following steps:
1. Assign costs to each critical value-creating activity identified in Step 2
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 7 of 9
8. Value Chain Analysis
2. Find the cost drivers for each critical value-creating activity that is driven by more than
one major cost category.
3. Diagnose the company’s current strategy for areas of potential low-cost advantage.
You should be able to estimate costs and margins for each of the activities in your chain like the above
figure for a seafood processing company (Source: www.fao.org, accessed Jan. 23, 2014)
Step 4: Conduct an Internal Differentiation Value Advantage Analysis
Differentiation advantages can arise from any segment of the value chain. For example, procurement of
unique and scarcely available inputs that rivals cannot access can allow value-adding differentiation of
the product to customers, as can effective distribution channels that provide customers with high levels
of service quality. Similar to the internal cost analysis, the internal differentiation analysis starts with
identifying the company’s value-creating activities and cost drivers.
Step 5: Map the Industry Profit Pool
• Define the Parameters of the Industry Profit Pool
• Estimate the Total Size of the Industry Profit Pool
• Estimate the Distribution of the Profit Pool
Step 6: Vertical Linkage Analysis
The opportunities to achieve cost and differentiation advantages within the company’s value chain were
reviewed in Steps 1 through 4. Step 5 allowed you to determine whether the company is strategically
positioned in the shallow or deep end of the industry’s profit pool. Vertical linkage analysis allows you to
seek opportunities to exploit the most important sources of competitive advantage in the industry’s
value system. You can combine your intimate knowledge of the company’s economic structure,
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 8 of 9
9. Value Chain Analysis
customer value, and external competitive analysis to determine how to reposition the company into the
deep end of the industry profit pool - and keep it there
Step 7: Iteration
Repeat Steps 1 through 6 periodically by making VCA a central component of your company’s
competitive intelligence and strategy development system. This helps you proactively manage
evolutionary and revolutionary industry change. VCA should be completed at least annually and can
show subtle shifts in rivals’ tactics or strategies that you may competitively exploit for optimal impact in
most product, company, or industry spaces. This will help you determine how the primary and support
activities can work together effectively and efficiently to help your organization achieve healthier
margins and sustain competitive advantage.
Complementary Methods
• Benchmarking
• Competitor Cash Flow Analysis
• Competitive Profiling
• Customer Value Analysis
• Functional Capability and Resource Analysis
• Profit Pools Analysis
• SERVO Analysis
• Strategic Cost Management
• Supply Chain Management Analysis
• SWOT Analysis
Additional Resources
See chapter 13 (pg. 221-245) on Value Analysis in the (2013) book Analysis without Paralysis: 12 Tools
to Make Better Strategic Decisions, 2nd
Ed., by Babette E. Bensoussan and Craig S. Fleisher, Upper Saddle
River, NJ: FT Press.
Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods by Craig S. Fleisher
and Babette Bensoussan, 2007, Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.
Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition by Craig
S. Fleisher and Babette Bensoussan, 2003, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, by Michael E. Porter, 1985, New
York, NY: The Free Press. The chapters in Part I are focused on VCA.
A Handbook for Value Chain Research by R. Kaplinsky and M. Morris. Paper produced for the IRDC.
http://www.globalvaluechains.org/docs/VchNov01.pdf
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 9 of 9
10. Value Chain Analysis
customer value, and external competitive analysis to determine how to reposition the company into the
deep end of the industry profit pool - and keep it there
Step 7: Iteration
Repeat Steps 1 through 6 periodically by making VCA a central component of your company’s
competitive intelligence and strategy development system. This helps you proactively manage
evolutionary and revolutionary industry change. VCA should be completed at least annually and can
show subtle shifts in rivals’ tactics or strategies that you may competitively exploit for optimal impact in
most product, company, or industry spaces. This will help you determine how the primary and support
activities can work together effectively and efficiently to help your organization achieve healthier
margins and sustain competitive advantage.
Complementary Methods
• Benchmarking
• Competitor Cash Flow Analysis
• Competitive Profiling
• Customer Value Analysis
• Functional Capability and Resource Analysis
• Profit Pools Analysis
• SERVO Analysis
• Strategic Cost Management
• Supply Chain Management Analysis
• SWOT Analysis
Additional Resources
See chapter 13 (pg. 221-245) on Value Analysis in the (2013) book Analysis without Paralysis: 12 Tools
to Make Better Strategic Decisions, 2nd
Ed., by Babette E. Bensoussan and Craig S. Fleisher, Upper Saddle
River, NJ: FT Press.
Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods by Craig S. Fleisher
and Babette Bensoussan, 2007, Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.
Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition by Craig
S. Fleisher and Babette Bensoussan, 2003, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, by Michael E. Porter, 1985, New
York, NY: The Free Press. The chapters in Part I are focused on VCA.
A Handbook for Value Chain Research by R. Kaplinsky and M. Morris. Paper produced for the IRDC.
http://www.globalvaluechains.org/docs/VchNov01.pdf
All Rights Reserved to Aurora WDC Page 9 of 9