Value Stream Mapping :: Lean Sales and Marketing thru Service Design Thinking

Archive for Value Stream Mapping

May

Where does a Customer Find Value in your Organization?

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Have you ever evaluated where your customer finds value within your company?

In Lean you try to find the one best path – the value stream map. In the marketing, we have created the marketing funnel. However, Organizations can no longer feed products to customers, as I described in the blog post, Kill the Sales and Marketing Funnel. Customers have the ability to access resources and information comparable to their suppliers and choose suppliers by their own definition of value and how that value should be created. Organizations must adapt to the networks our customer chooses to find value in the use of our products and services.

Verna Allee, M.A., is Co-founder and CEO of Value Networks LLC introduced me last year to Value Network Mapping through this Business901 podcast, What’s behind Collaboration and Value Networks? I have played with it, not mastering and have become more and more intrigued by the concept. Our world is increasingly more collaborative driving changes in the way decisions are made. Our organizations need to change to a more collaborative structure but the question is where do we begin?

From Value Networks and the true nature of collaboration by Verna Allee with Oliver Schwabe is a digital edition book located at http://www.valuenetworksandcollaboration.com.

Roles and interactions – providing focus for collaborative work

Role-based exchange networks are the natural way that people organize and collaborate to create value and achieve outcomes. In such a network every single person executes a chosen role. Through that role they provide value contributions to others and receive value in turn. Further, as long as people experience a sense of reciprocity and perceived value or accomplishment from the interactions – people will stay engaged.

The collaboration patterns that make things work have been pushed to the background through more than two decades of focusing on business process models. Now, with the growing use of social networking and collaborative technologies, the importance of those patterns is finally being recognized.

Indeed, people, and their very human exchanges and interactions are at the heart of value creation. People, not processes, are the active agents in organizations. Only people have the unique capacity to identify opportunities, innovate, and provide value.

Value streams typically only focuses only on the more formal deliverables. In sales and marketing it is not only the formal deliverable but the informal, which in value networks are called tangible and intangible.

Verna defines these deliverables:

When we model business activity we get into the very specific kinds of exchanges that are critical for success and we define two types of exchanges. We call them tangible or intangible.Tangibles are those things that are formal, contractual. If you don’t do these somebody’s going to want their money back. The things you must do, the value that must be delivered. We also are modeling all of those intangibles or informal exchanges that really build relationships and help things run smoothly. That is what is missing from process modeling.

Value network modeling is something that allows us to understand the pattern of different activities within organization or within the same basic value network structure. It’s a very, very different way of thinking about who delivers value. I like to use red and black checker after creating a map and stack them on the individual roles. I use black for tangible and red for intangible. This way you can have a better visual on what role the customer derives the most value from and what kind of value the customer is seeking.

Below is a transcription of the podcast I had with Verna and I recommend that you view her website for more information and to download a map outline to try it out.

Verna Allee book: The Future of Knowledge: Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks

Value Chain Thinking is not Rocket Science

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However, The majority of businesses struggle to apply it and when they do they often fail. There are some simple tips that senior managers should consider before taking the plunge – don’t try and do it alone (collaboration means sharing the journey – where to go and how to get there), don’t try to do it with everyone (pick your partners) and don’t give up when the first effort fails (trust needs to be earned over time and change rarely happens overnight).

From the University of Kent:

He makes it sound simple. However, if you took these four factors and rate your company where would you stand?

I find most companies force these issues rather than leaving a natural flow of information occur. The world around us is changing at a rapid rate and most companies struggle adapting to it effectively. Is it due to that tired out organizational structure that was developed in the last century?

Start with Journey Mapping vs Value Stream Mapping

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Value Stream Mapping is a process most consider an exercise for finding and removing waste. It is a foundational Lean Tool that typically gets introduced early in a Lean Transformation. A Systems2win Excel template is depicted below:

In Sales and Marketing you will utilize a Value Stream Mapping process on a project by project basis but it is typically limited to an internal process. It is a difficult correlation for customer facing experiences. The preferred method of mapping the customer experience is through a journey map. I prefer two styles, one a basic Excel Template that is very similar to a typical Swim Lane chart commonly used in Lean.

From Smart Cities – A guide to using Customer Journey Mapping

Another is circular method demonstrated by the Lego Wheel. Lego uses tool called a ‘customer experience wheel’ to map an existing experience. “We understand what is and what is not important to the customer in that experience and then we design a ‘wow’ experience to improve it.” Though I like the wheel better I have not found a program that could make it easy for me to draw and distribute.

The advantage of creating this map utilizing the Excel template is that you can easily add notes and drill down further down into a process by adding columns and rows. Drawing in Excel is rather easy once you understand how, Become Proficient Drawing with Excel in 30 minutes!and remember you can do MATH, CHARTS and everything else you already know about Excel. If you want more information on how to create a journey map below is an excellent slide show describing the process. If you want to learn more about Value stream Mapping, drawing in Excel or Swim Lanes, I would recommend downloading the trail templates at Systems2win.com.

The Journey Mapping Guidance Cabinet Office[1]

View more presentations from Gerald Power

A good post on discussing some of the pros and cons of different types of Journey Maps can be found at Visualizing the customer experience using customer experience journey maps. You may also want to consider viewing the Lean Marketing Game presentation. It is based on extending the journey map through out your organization.