A few years ago, I worked on an enterprise architecture (hereafter referred to as EA) project as a part of the transformation program that impact on every business areas of a large organization in Europe. Before I joined, the team threw away their 2 months work for not having suitable models that complied with the new methodology. After 3 months working with the team, the functional architecture department has decided to make a big change in the methodology to be aligned with the business strategy and the industry standard. The decision was impacted on all projects. Our work seemed like an endless treadmill of changing.
This situation made me think of having a solid EA basis.
What is Enterprise?
Enterprise is any collection of organizations that has a common set of goals.
TOGAF
What is Architecture?
The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution.
ISO/ IEC 42010:2007
Now that we have established the concept of EA. You will find that there are many frameworks in the market. Some of them are specific for vertical markets.
I have provided a description of some of EA below.
- TOGAF Framework: Provides a method for developing EA. It is developed and maintained by Open Group.
- eTOM: business process framework for telecommunication companies. It is maintained by TM Forum.
- The Zachman Framework: a schema that basically consists of a matrix with classification interrogatives and audience perspective.
- The Federal Enterprise Architecture. It was developed by US Government.
“The question that you might ask yourself now is what is the value of EA? “
There are many benefits but we can focus on three main benefits:
1. Cost Reduction
A survey of 103 U.S. and European companies about their IT and IT-enabled business processes. 30 % of the companies have digitalized their core processes have higher profitability, faster time to market and more value from their IT investments, 25% lower IT cost compared to their competitors.
It is a major benefit, especially in some economies with financial recession, where CEO and executives reduce operational staff of the company and do not include other actions as developing EA.
2. Process Optimization
When I meet with business owners to discuss the description of the business processes, sometimes it is not easy to describe the scenarios and activities. However, knowing the business processes is the first step to improve your business.
Having an optimize business process reduces the complexity of the business; e.g. improve the workflow of approval from fifteen reviewers and approvers to six, organize and delete unnecessary activities of order management process.
In large organizations, we might find real silos where there are duplicate business processes and applications in different branches or business units such as six product catalogs, three GIS applications in the whole company.
3. Strategic differentiation
There are companies that are growing fast and have expanded in different markets like Chinese companies. Despite others might close down in a year.
EA provides a quick respond or anticipate new business drivers, new competitive pressures or legislation, e.g. the company launches a new mobile product within months, digitalization of all your products and services of a company.
References
- Ross, J.W., Weill, P., Robertson, D.C.: Enterprise Architecture as Strategy. Harvard Business School Press. August. 1, 2006.
- https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb466232.aspx
- http://www.iso-architecture.org/ieee-1471/afs/frameworks-table.html
- https://www.gartner.com/doc/388268/enterprise-architecture-benefits-justification
