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Value chain maps or capability maps?
This entry was posted in Capabilities, Value chain and tagged activities, capabilities, capability maps, design process, Operating Models, processes, target operating model, TOM, value chain analysis. Bookmark the permalink.
Ashridge on Operating Models 
Understanding the business is often a useful first step to be undertaken before restructuring it. When constructing a map of a business, such that it can be understood sufficiently well for restructure to be possible, capability maps are a documentation method that abstracts what the business does from people, process or tools.
Those same capabilities can be strung out into a rough process to create a value chain. The boxes in the value chain could come from the capability model. That then shows what the business does and the order in which it’s done and the work on restructuring the business using the value chain as the model.
In summary, capability maps and value chain maps aren’t different, creation of them are the first and second logical steps in restructuring a business.
Peter, Thanks for your thoughts. Are you saying that a capability map and a value chain map are interchangeable? Or are you saying that you need to do both? Or are you saying that each has a slightly different benefit for the analyst?
My proposal is that the value chain map is more useful to the analyst for laying out the operations of a business. I am also wondering whether a capability map may be more useful for laying out the support activities – like IT and HR. Any thoughts about this?
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