This blog is adapted from the paper, “Value Creating Networks: Organizational Issues and Challenges,” being published in November by Emerald in The Learning Organization Special Issue on Social Networks and Social Networking.
This example demonstrates how value network modeling can bring fresh insights into even long established organizational structures and processes. A large utility company wanted to improve their ability to handle complex technology repairs and improve their service delivery. Previously they had modeled this work as a business process but “exceptions” were causing costly delays in responding to trouble tickets.
The project team convened a one-day workshop to map out the technology service activity and begin a VNA. Figure 1 is the original “as is” map showing both tangible and intangible deliverables. The temptation was to simply map the “official” repair service process. However, in order to address the real issues the group used a sequencing approach to map exactly where the technology repair became problematic and escalated to a “worst case” scenario. They first mapped the critical interactions and then “told the story” of the activated network by sequencing the interactions.
From this map the group identified and pulled out several different value flows where they could gain improvements. In the following figures the thick black lines and comments show where the group identified significant gaps in their own understanding of the roles, relationships, and interactions in the activity.
Figure 2 shows the “Happy Path” scenario, where the trouble is reported and handled as it should be and the customer is satisfied. Even in this happy path the project team was able to identify issues and improvements. VNA is especially valuable for addressing “hand-offs” where responsibility for the activity shifts from one role to another. The Happy Path team found a number of these hand-off areas where one role would assume something was being taken care of but there was no way of actually knowing. They also needed to better understand certain communication flows.
Figure 3 depicts the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) activity where these are developed internally. The Service Coordinators, Field Technicians, and Field Managers must reference this information frequently to respond appropriately to different customers. Yet, they found that the information is often missing or not complete. In other scenarios a particular Service Level Agreement had been created in a way that made response either difficult or needlessly labor intensive. They realized that for the technical repair activity to work well, they needed to be much more involved in developing and managing Service Level Agreements, but had little understanding of the activity or how they could best contribute to improving it.
Figure 4 shows the Escalation flow. This is what happens when things are not going well. Note the number of informal requests for information and updates passing between the Customer Technology Manager, Field Manager, Field Technicians, and Service Coordinator. Intangibles of this type are frequently found where there are “work-arounds” because something is broken. Here there were both and informal and formal processes that were needlessly redundant. The implications for coordinating these flows across multiple organizations within the company are significant. VNA provides a different foundation for thinking about technology support that goes far beyond simply processing trouble tickets or problem reports.
This example shows just how many improvement insights can emerge from a VNA. In this case the project team divided into smaller groups, each dedicated to optimizing one of the value flows. They achieved outstanding performance improvements in just a few weeks of work with the issues. Perhaps more importantly, by engaging with other roles involved they improved communication and collaboration significantly across organizational boundaries.
Also of interest is the Online Version of Final Draft: Allee, Verna, "Value Creating Networks," The Learning Organization Special Issue on Social Networks and Social Networking, Volume 6, Issue 6, pp. 427-442, November 2009. | 
