Mard Michael J. et al. Driving Your Company’s Value: Strategic Benchmarking for Value

Authors: Robert R. Dunne, Michael J. Mard, Edi Osborne, James S. Rigby, Jr. — John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2004. — 207 p. — ISBN: 0-471-64855-8 (cloth)This book is about value metrics within strategy execution. In today’s knowledge-based economy, senior executives are faced with the challenge of optimizing their investment in systems and human capital to help their business:
Execute strategy
Improve productivity
Enhance the perceived value of its own products and services
To capture the full value of an organization it is essential to closely align strategic planning and operational execution. The Strategic Benchmarking for Value (SBfV) Model does just that. The model identifies three key elements — strategy, systems, and people — that need to be managed synchronously to derive full value from all three factors (see Exhibit A). It provides a systematic way of planning and monitoring a successful business strategy with the necessary systems and people infrastructures to execute it. It provides a practical and powerful way to ensure that businesses get the full benefit from their investment in systems and people. It is a means of giving order with clarity to the process of bringing an organization’s business plan and budget into unity with the infrastructure to make the plan work.
Only when a business’s strategy, systems, and people have been aligned can the business advance successfully. Today’s enlightened leaders understand that a focus on value creation is a holistic endeavor and cannot be accomplished by simply focusing on individual pieces of the value creation process. A holistic approach to the value creation process requires:
A consistent approach to management planning, resource allocation, performance assessment, and communication.
A management focus on and priority of value creation.
Alignment of management action with strategic objectives and shareholder value.
An understanding of the Five Dimensions of the value creation process.
Strategic benchmarking to monitor the value creation process.Organizations seem to find it difficult or impossible to harness the synergy of people and systems for their long-term benefit. The problem is that too much attention is placed on systems or people independent of their links and leverage effects on other business operations, customer value propositions, and each other. Companies fail to recognize the importance of building organizational structures, sets of business processes, and product or service offerings that reflect the interdependence of enterprise strategy, systems’ capabilities, and people’s skill sets that yield the core competencies to sustain long-term growth and productivity.
SBfV is a powerful, but simple model. It recognizes that different people in an organization make, at different times, different sets of business decisions. The alignment process emphasizes that the decisions need to be coordinated to achieve maximum value.