Networks
Stakeholders in corporate performance include customers, suppliers, employees, credit and equity partners, professional advisors, governments, local communities, the environment and others. These various constituents have dynamic and complex relationships over time. A company’s ability to understand and manage these relationships is highly dependent on their ability to identify, visualize and measure their stakeholder networks. PVS builds customized simulation models to aid in the discovery, assessment, measurement and management of such relationship networks.
- The relationships between individual people drive transactions between companies; they also drive corporate behavior, culture and financial results. Our objective is to bring visibility and measurement of the alignment of individual efforts with the financial interests of each client. To accomplish this, we build custom “Stakeholder Relationship Network” models to reveal root causes of enterprise performance and enterprise risk results. These models are used to support enterprise performance optimization efforts for companies in three primary areas:
- Sales Chain Optimization (e.g. customers, channel partners, distribution, operations)
- Supply Chain Optimization (e.g. suppliers, buying groups, distribution, manufacturing)
- Enabler Network Optimization (e.g. employees, advisors, shareholders, banks, regulators)
Depending on corporate priorities, client projects generally start with one part of the financial value chain and grow over time to create a simulation of their entire business “ecosystem”.
- Building on the approach outlined above, stakeholders in the capital markets represent some of the most influential constituents in corporate performance. We assess stakeholder network performance for owners, lenders and their portfolio companies, and we develop performance improvement strategies that are measurable and visible to clients.
Relationships are influenced by people and firms through public and private equity securities, along with various tiers of structured debt and derivative security instruments. Further, senior lenders and trade creditors also exhibit influence in the behavior and performance of the companies in which they’re invested.
While financial instruments are fairly transparent in their terms and financial impact on corporate performance, sometimes PVS simulations of the people and firms behind the instruments can illuminate powerful strategies not easily detected through traditional analysis.
- Continuing with the stakeholder relationship networks approach, another key constituent in corporate performance is the “ecosystem” of third party professionals involved with the company.
Investors, board members, investment banks, accounting and auditing firms, lawyers, lobbyists, consultants and other third parties may working for and/or against the interests of a particular company over time. While the relationships of particular firms with companies can be discovered with subscription based research services, the detail of relationships between individual people at those firms is more complex to assess as the people move between and among firms over time.
Since professionals often exert significant influence on the leadership team and other members of the corporate community, it is more critical than ever to assess and track the alignment of these firms and individuals over time.
- Government and regulatory authorities are not directly involved in corporate decision making and operating performance, but these constituents determine “rules and cost structure” for the business ecosystem in their jurisdictions. As such, it is critical to recognize that the stakeholders already profiled above continually assess the alignment and impact of regulatory authorities on their financial objectives.
Global sourcing and other outsourcing decisions are particularly focused on assessments of this type. Corporate stakeholders leverage their knowledge often to the detriment of those stakeholders that cannot assess the interdependency of financial relationships in their operating “ecosystems”.
Our unique tools, perspectives, and experienced resources also enable greater transparency on the interplay of corporate performance, governance and taxation issues.
- Each person associated with an organization has relationships both internal and external to that organization. These relationships may help or hinder progress with targeted organizational outcomes. In order to help understand influence both inside and between organizations, PVS enables analysis of patterns & trends in these communications and economic relationships.
It is critical to maximize the interactions of positively aligned stakeholders, and to minimize the interactions of negatively aligned stakeholders, in order to achieve targeted results. People have discretion over how to align their personal “relationship networks” in specific situations and performance contexts. Individual roles, functions, responsibilities, attributes, affiliations, demographics and geographic considerations converge to influence personal behavior and performance in each organizational context. Our work reveals financial and other incentive factors so that key performance indicators (KPI’s) and strategies can be employed to better align behaviors with stakeholder objectives.