How VSM Intelligence is Fueling Digital Transformation at Tyson Foods

Any time you’re trying to move fast, visibility is critical. It’s what makes the difference between whether you’re making rapid progress toward your targets or bumping around in the dark.

This is especially true if you’re trying to accelerate digital transformation objectives. However, too many are trying to move forward without the visibility they need. Within many organizations, teams lack the data needed to concretely measure the value they’re getting from their digital transformations. Without a way to track value, it’s next to impossible to maximize that value.

Given that, it’s no surprise that a report from Bain & Company found that only 8% of organizations have hit their targeted business outcomes with their investments in digital technologies .

Value Stream Management: the fuel for transformation

To achieve transformation imperatives, leaders need to find a way to finally break through persistent barriers and gain the cross-team visibility they need. Fundamentally, this requires gaining the enhanced visibility that can only come by leveraging data that’s been locked away in functional silos. To fuel transformation, teams need to accurately track all facets of the digital value stream—including products, people, and processes.

This is why establishing effective Value Stream Management (VSM) is such a vital imperative. With VSM, teams can gain the unified, cross-domain intelligence needed to optimize every phase of value delivery, from planning and investment, through to development and rollout.

Introducing a new report from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services

Broadcom recently sponsored a briefing paper from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, which is entitled Entering the Age of Data-Driven Digital Transformation with Value Stream Management.

This report takes a detailed look at some of the challenges that have stifled digital transformation in recent years. The report’s authors also reveal some of the strategies and tools that have been proven to help teams overcome these obstacles, drawing on insights from industry experts at Bain & Company and IDC.

Tyson harnesses the power of VSM

Digital transformation is a top priority

This Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report also provides some of the key lessons drawn from Tyson Foods’ successful VSM initiatives. A $53 billion multinational corporation, Tyson is one of the largest food processors in the US.

To thrive in their markets, Tyson’s leaders knew they needed to transform their technologies. However, before they could effectively move from analog to digital processes, they first had to transform their fundamental workflows, operations, and approaches.

In the past, leaders and other stakeholders could only track projects that were being managed in a capital request system. As a result, a lot of smaller projects were being missed by leaders, even though these projects combined to present a significant burden on teams within the organization.

Harnessing unified visibility

This report reveals how VSM helped the team at Tyson establish the critical instrumentation they needed to manage their transformations. Through VSM strategies and solutions, they’ve eliminated data silos and established a unified way to track spending and resources. Further, they’ve employed a single platform that everyone can work with. Teams can immediately access the solution and see how initiatives are progressing, as well as the business case for why the effort was undertaken to begin with.

Mapping investments to value

VSM enabled the team to close the loop between investments and the value those investments deliver. In the process, they’ve gained the intelligence needed to prioritize, invest, and plan more effectively.

With VSM, they have more visibility into how people are being utilized. Through their VSM tools, their program management office realized that ongoing demand typically exceeded 300% of the development team’s capacity.

VSM data helps ensure employee goals are better aligned with top-level objectives. They were able to pivot to focus on the highest-value initiatives, and reduce or deprioritize 30% of the projects that had been in-flight previously. Now, demand typically runs at a much more realistic 100-120% of capacity.

Conclusion

The market victors of tomorrow won’t necessarily be the ones with the best products or services today. They’ll be the ones that can iterate most quickly as market needs evolve, so they can deliver the best offerings moving forward. The new report from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services offers a compelling and authoritative look at how VSM can deliver the intelligence that enables significant enhancements in agility. To learn more, be sure to review the report, which is entitled Entering the Age of Data-Driven Digital Transformation with Value Stream Management.

In addition, to find out more about how Broadcom ValueOps solutions are enabling teams to capitalize on the power of VSM, visit the ValueOps page on Broadcom Software Academy.