Value chains have played a major part in organisational growth over the past years. However in the digital world the empowered buyer has become central to the supply process as quality, price and friction less delivery are increasingly vital as competition increases.

This in turn drives the need for relationships between customers, suppliers and partners that are more multi-dimensional and as a consequence Value Chains are giving way to Value Networks.

When we look at Value Chains they are mostly linear, however in the digital age the paths to purchase are no longer linear. Furthermore important business information is held in silos so responding to change is slow and difficult.

Fundamentally linear architectures make it difficult to respond simultaneously to multiple demands from across the Value Chain as being hardwired they become unresponsive, harder to maintain and can be prone to breaking resulting in possible costly downtime.

Any organisation that sells goods and services are looking at ways to better interact with customers, partners and suppliers, and the move to digital is transforming the way in which they now interact, thus enhancing the customer experience and helping further build better relationships.

The cost of retaining an existing customer is less than it is trying to gain a new one.

Future success will require a shift from the linear Value Chains towards collaborative Value Networks that are made up of dynamically connected “Plug & Play” relationships

They require collaboration inside and between organisations, so that we can innately understand data that we exchange

 

Value Networks

 

In a Value Chain the consumer is positioned at the very end but with the collaborative approach of the Value Network the consumer is now positioned at the heart. The Value Network adopts a plug and play approach whereby your manufacturers, suppliers, logistic providers, financial institutions are all dynamically connected; thus leading to a far more agile and reliable approach, with consumers are at the heart of the Value Network and drive all data flows.

In summary the value of your Data is now determined by the value of relationships you have in your Network, and all have information that is important and can be shared to improve the consumer experience

By creating a Value Network you can start to “Close the Digital Divide”

Download our latest whitepaper @ www.closethedigitaldivide.com

 

Source: W3 Blog