Value Drivers: The Manager's Guide for Driving Corporate Value Creation

Mark C. Scott value drivers How does my company actually work? How do I become a better manager? How can I fit these pieces together to get ahead? The Manager's Guide to Driving Corporate Value Creation These questions are answered in this book. Mark Scott has created an easy-to-understand visual framework and the practical tools that will enhance any manager's performance. He teaches you how to recognize what your own organization does well and what it does badly. The tools provided will help you make crucial improvements in your own area of responsibility within your organization. "In a decade where most management books wax lyrical on consulting fads for the boardroom, it focuses on the solid, unglamorous but essential ground of helping managers and employees diagnose performance and take action for themselves." Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive Officer, WPP Group PLC "Effective strategy is something that is lived everyday by managers at the coal face through a continual process of analysis, learning, refinement and application. This book is a useful primer for time-pressed managers who want to know how to add value to their companies' strategies." Professor John Quelch, Dean, London Business School "Our business is founded on smart, independent thinking professionals helping clients solve complex problems. Any book that can give people better tools to understand these problems is useful. Unlike many I read, this is a useful book." Terence M. Graunke, Chairman, Lighthouse Holdings Inc

Table of Contents:
About the Author vii Introduction 1 1. Why are Firms in Business in the First Place? 5 Mission and corporate strategy 2. Segmentation 11 Customer-based segmentation Skills-based segmentation 3. Ranking SBUs 22 4. Corporate Strategy Revisited 30 Portfolio strategy Vertical integration Horizontal integration Financial holding strategy 5. How Well is the Firm Doing? 44 Return on equity Cash flow Productivity 6. Understanding the Market Context 54 Competition: differentiation versus low costs The market model 7. Core Competencies 85 Value chain strategy Operations strategy Marketing, sales and service strategy Innovation strategy Financial strategy Human resource strategy Information technology strategy Lobbying position with government 8. Core Competencies Revisited 217 9. Back to Corporate Strategy 224 Corporate structures Role of management 10. Back to the Bottom Line 233 Calculating future cash flows Valuing cash flows 11. Conclusion 242 Appendix 1: Benchmarking 244 Appendix 2: Where Do You Get the Data? 247 Select Bibliography 250 Index 255

About the Author :
Mark C. Scott is Executive Vice President of Lake Capital Management, a principal investment group specialising in investing in professional service firms. He formerly held the same position at Lighthouse Global Network, a global marketing services group. He was previously an Operations Director at WPP Group plc and prior to this has worked for a number of years as a management consultant in Europe and the USA. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School and was educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He is the author of Value Drivers and Reinspiring the Corporation.