Value-Chain Framework A focus on customer value means that the management accounting system should produce information about both realization and sacrifice. Collecting information about customer sacrifice means gathering information outside the firm. But there are even deeper implications. Successful pursuit of cost leadership and/or differentiation strategies requires an understanding of a firm's internal and industrial value chains. Effective management of the internal value chain is fundamental to increasing customer value, especially if maximizing customer realization at the lowest possible cost (to the firm) is a goal. The internal value chain in the set of activities required to design, develop, produce, market, and deliver products and services to customers. Thus, emphasizing customer value forces managers to determine which activities in the value chain are important to customers. A management accounting system should track information about a wide variety of activities that span the internal value chain. Consider, for example, the delivery segment. Timely delivery of a product or service is part of the total product and, thus, of value to the customer.
Customer value can be increased by increasing the speed of delivery and response. Federal Express exploited this part of the value chain and successfully developed a service that was not being offered by the U.S. Postal Service. Today, many customers believe that a delivery delayed is a delivery denied. This seems to indicate that a good management accounting system ought to develop and measure indicators of customer satisfaction.