Enterprise Value Map

What is the Enterprise Value Map?

The Enterprise Value Map™ is Deloitte's one-page framework that connects the actions a company can take to the drivers of shareholder value. Deloitte describes it as a visual framework that links strategies, initiatives and operations to shareholder value. It splits value into four drivers, revenue growth, operating margin, asset efficiency and expectations, and breaks each driver into the improvement levers that move it.

Deloitte developed it in the early 2000s as a playbook for CFOs. The Sustainable Value Map™ that followed extends the same logic to employees, customers and the public, and the environment.

Why it matters to a revenue leader

It lets a revenue leader trace a sales initiative to the measures a CFO and a board use. Most of a sales team's work sits under revenue growth: winning new customers, keeping and growing current ones, and holding price. But sales also shows up elsewhere on the map. The cost of winning and serving customers sits under operating margin, and how fast customers pay sits under asset efficiency. A revenue leader who can place an initiative on the map speaks the same language as the finance team that funds it.

How to use it for initiatives, operational issues and business cases

Business initiatives. Deloitte suggests two directions. Start at shareholder value and work down, asking how each driver could improve, to check that tactics serve the objective. Or start at an action and work up, asking why you are doing it, to check that it leads to value.

Operational issues. Find where the issue sits. Slow collections belong under asset efficiency. A rising cost to win and serve customers belongs under operating margin. Customers who don't renew belong under revenue growth. The levers next to the issue show what you can change: a process, an asset or a capability.

Business cases. Name the driver the initiative moves, the measure that will show it and the size of the change, then show the path up the map to shareholder value. A case that can't be traced up the map is hard to defend in a budget meeting.

A $40 million services company takes 62 days on average to collect from customers. The sales leader proposes clearer payment terms at signing and invoices that go out the day the job closes. On the map, that is asset efficiency, receivables. Bringing collection down to 50 days frees about $1.3 million of cash ($40 million ÷ 365 × 12 days), and the business case says so in those terms.

See the map

The Enterprise Value Map™ is Deloitte's work, and the map itself belongs to Deloitte. We describe it here and link to Deloitte's own material rather than reproduce it.