Porter’s model looks at primary and support functions within the organization’s value chain to create added value to the organization. In looking at purchasing, specifically, only looking at how to decrease costs inherent to the purchasing process may eclipse the firm’s ability to take advantage of synergistic interactions with the firm’s suppliers to reduce costs and capital use even further (Shank, p. 14).
Shank (p. 27) utilized Strategic Cost Management (SCM) verses the Management Cost Paradigm (MAP), which is more in line with Porter’s mentality, to show how value addition is determined (Shank, p. 27) by addressing the costs involved.
The SCM paradigm addresses strategy as a matter of addressing the value chain overall. Strategy (in Shank’s model), in observing the overall value chain elements and their interaction internally and externally, is molded by the firm itself as wells as the competition, suppliers and customers needs, wants and perceptions as well as costs. Accounting is not the end all to the process, but is an integral part of the process, therefore, intangibles are taken into account that pure cost accounting (of Porter) cannot address.
Porter’s objectives in analyzing the situation account for three processes; evaluating/scoring; directing attention, and; solving the issues. Porter’s value chain uses these three process as without regard to the strategy involved