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Porter’s Value Chain in StratEngine breaks your company into nine activity areas, from logistics and operations to procurement, and shows where each one adds value, costs too much or could set you apart. Where Porter’s Five Forces looks outward at the industry, the value chain looks inward at how you operate. You need the Professional plan or higher, or a pay-as-you-go account.
Porter’s Value Chain is included in the Professional plan and higher, and pay-as-you-go accounts can run it too. It carries the Advanced badge. On Free and Essential, its card shows Upgrade instead of Select. See Strategy plans.

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When to use it

  • You need to cut costs and want to know which activities to look at first.
  • You want to pin down which parts of the business create your competitive advantage.
  • You’re considering outsourcing, a new supplier or a new system and want to see the knock-on effects.

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What you get

The result opens on the Components tab. Framework Summary gives an Executive Summary, and Sources lists what the analysis cited. Under Framework Details, you get one section for each activity area. Primary activities:
  • Inbound Logistics
  • Operations
  • Outbound Logistics
  • Marketing and Sales
  • Service
Support activities:
  • Firm Infrastructure
  • Human Resource Management
  • Technology Development
  • Procurement
Standard and Deep runs also fill the Momentum tab (trends affecting the company), which means Essential and higher plans, or pay-as-you-go at Standard or Deep. Deep runs add the Assumptions tab (what the analysis depends on, by risk), which means Professional, or pay-as-you-go at Deep. See Work with framework results and Analysis depth.

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Run it

1

Open Generate Framework

In the side menu, under Quick Frameworks, click Generate Framework.
2

Select Porter's Value Chain

Under Select Framework, find Porter’s Value Chain in the Market & Product Strategy group and click Select.
3

Describe the business

Fill in the Business Context fields: company name, business summary, industry, target customer and so on. See Generate a framework for what each field needs, and for loading a saved company or autofilling from a document.Then, under Framework Inputs (Optional), answer the questions specific to Porter’s Value Chain:Click Continue.
4

Pick a depth and generate

On a subscription plan there’s no depth choice here: the framework runs at the deepest depth your plan includes. On pay-as-you-go, choose Quick Scan, Standard or Deep under Analysis depth. Click Generate Framework. The app shows the processing time for that depth, from ~2 min for Quick Scan to ~8 min for Deep.