Accounting Data for Value Chain Analysis

Strategic planning frameworks provide a means of combining internal data about the firm’s capabilities with external information about the competitive environment in a manner designed to guide resource allocation. The value chain approach to strategic planning, as described by Michael Porter in his book “Competitive Advantage” (1985), is a recent addition to this family of planning frameworks. In this article, some of the difficulties in using accounting data for value chain analysis are addressed. These difficulties are divided into those that are inherent, because of differences in methods of data accumulation, and those that are avoidable.