Value Chain
Described and popularized by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, the value chain identifies the various value-adding activities of an organization or network. Often used as a tool for strategic planning because of its emphasis on maximizing value while minimizing costs.
The Value-Chain Analysis should be a part of the strategic planning process to revisit the value-chains periodically (say once in a year or two, depending on the industry dynamics) and check whether there is an improved way (lesser processing time with higher productivity, as an example). One of the starting point to revisit the value-chain could be customer need survey report. Ideally, the value-chains should provide comfort to the pain-points of the customers in a leanest possible way at customers’ ready-to-pay price.