The Story
At Deloitte, Stephen worked on a project for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District which needed to improve customer service in their call centers. He thought of all the different ways the utility’s call center could achieve better performance – such as tracking first call resolution, time of call, and team retention – and basically drew it as a graph that illustrated all the ways to improve service that was easy for the client to understand. He called it the Call Center Value Map. It seemed simple, and amazingly effective.
This map eventually evolved into the CRM Value Map, which later became the Enterprise Value Map: a document that clearly outlines how to create shareholder value.
As an analytical guy, Stephen saw shareholder value as a mathematical equation. It has components such as increasing growth, profitability, asset efficiency, and decreasing risk. For the Enterprise Value Map, he laid out these components and detailed how to achieve those things. For example, under “growing revenue,” he outlined the four items needed to accomplish that at the highest level. Those items were then broken down into the steps that can be taken to achieve them. The Enterprise Value Map became a tree-like structure, and ultimately became an easy-to-understand document showing executives everything they can do to increase shareholder value.
This framework took something that was seen as black magic, and vague, and made it practical and easy to visualize. To his knowledge, no one had ever done that before – but to him, it felt like a fairly simple thing to do. The Enterprise Value Map came out in 2001, and he credits his colleague and right-hand man, Greg Dickinson, who worked with him many nights and weekends to build, design, and disseminate the final product.
The Impact
The Enterprise Value Map was very successful, and Deloitte started getting literally tens of thousands of requests to print them. The firm has since printed and distributed more than 100,000 copies, and to this day, continues to use the Enterprise Value Map as a key guide that communicates ways to create value for clients. The framework has also been adapted around the world, and has been translated into more than 15 languages.
Since its creation, the Enterprise Value Map has made a major impact on the consulting world. Before the framework was created, many consultants didn’t understand why they were doing something and how it drove shareholder value. Many had trouble communicating how they were adding value to the client, and there was nothing in place to hold them accountable to create value.
Now, the Enterprise Value Map has created a common language and a common framework for Deloitte consultants. It has kept them accountable – showing the connection between what they are doing and how it adds value – which was missing in the profession for a very long time.