Value focused management (VFM): Capitalizing on the potential of managerial value drivers

The goal of the firm is to maximize shareholder value. While most firms devote their main efforts to exploit financial value drivers such as mergers and acquisitions, not enough attention is being paid to managerial value drivers like reducing time to market, increasing throughput, or improving logistics, operations and supply chain management, although these managerial drivers have a much greater potential for value creation. This paper focuses on managerial value drivers and presents Value Focused Management (VFM), which is a methodology for enhancing the organization value by identifying its value drivers, quantifying their estimated contribution, and prioritizing them according to their relative value creation potential and difficulty of implementation. VFM combines Value Based Management (VBM) with the Theory of Constraints (TOC) along with practices such as the focusing matrix, and provides managers with a structured process that includes a focused diagnosis of the organization, followed by a comprehensive implementation plan which helps them direct their efforts towards the most promising value drivers. VFM has been successfully implemented in dozens of organizations worldwide. This paper analyzes a case study of a supermarket chain which demonstrates VFM's potential as an effective practical methodology to guide companies in their ongoing quest to increase shareholder value.