(Work in progress)

Enterprise Architecture (EA)

A blueprint for the optimal and target-conformant placement of resources in the IT environment for the ultimate support of the business function.

• Connects the business & IT strategy
  • Look at oranization & technology
  • Shares the same story, but in different way
  • Understands each area objectives and constraints
• Drives change
• Affects all development of the company
• Works with high-level abstractions of the created systems
• Provides technical communications throughout the company
• Design internet scale systems
• Focuses on the business component
• Conquer complexity
• Has a broad technological horizon
• Owns several domains
• Explains and demystify
• Remove Friction

Or in other words, a collection of special documents (artifacts) describing various aspects of an organization from an integrated business and IT perspective intended to bridge the communication gap between business and IT stakeholders, facilitate information systems planning and thereby improve business and IT alignment.

Why invest in Enterprise Architecture?

For many companies, the Enterprise Architecture is an afterthought, something only relevant to the architect who needs to give his or her sign-off during product feasibility meetings. The EA needs a seat at the table throughout the process to share guidelines and strategies with product development and IT teams that enable key growth levers. Among the reasons a clear EA is essential:

• It can provide a consistent experience, both from an employee and customer perspective. Designing an end-to-end enterprise architecture enables omnichannel integration, which can be translated into a more seamless customer journey.
• It enables the use of new technologies and simplifies integration. A well defined enterprise architecture streamlines the process for introducing cloud, automation, and the use of APIs, among other technologies. It helps drive a common platform and infrastructure that development teams can use to create products and services aligned to business objectives.
• It enables agility and flexibility to functions that use data to inform their decision-making. By aligning the data generated by the company and the tools used to collect that data, it becomes easier to automatically join, clean, and share data sets that enable supply chain, marketing, and operations teams to make decisions aligned to business goals.

EA as an Instrument for Communication

Strategic Alignment

If there's one constant in a fast-changing business environment it's that we need to stay innovative and nimble. If we want to achieve the best business outcomes the way to do this is to make sure everyone involved is working towards a common goal. This is especially true when it comes to alignment between IT and the business. What I mean by this is that, the IT person understands enough about the business goal and the business person understands enough about the technology to have a meaningful discussion about how they jointly achieve the desired business outcomes. If we focus on this type of collaboration we will find ourselves working smarter not harder.

One of the most important things we can do to achieve optimal IT and business alignment is be clear about the decision making process understanding that its business outcomes which should drive technology decisions not the other way around. Expecting technology partners however good they are to decide what capabilities need to be developed doesn't work on the flipside having the business dictate how they need to be developed isn't the best strategy either. Instead IT teams and business leaders need to collaborate in order to design effective business solutions powered by first-class technology. You also can not wait around until the perfect technology platform or solution is developed. You have to be willing to think quickly move nimbly and iterate collaboratively to solve problems on the fly get to market early and often should be a rallying call the best way to ensure effective collaboration is by bringing your business and IT professionals together in the same place by co-locating these groups. You can ensure everyone involved understands both the strategic business goals as well as the technology considerations. Think about the FinTech startup in the garage why do they have that energy that's spark the energy comes from colocation right people right place right results unless you're a close to this it may sound pretty obvious or the way it's always been done not so what makes this new is the partnership aspect. Traditionally the business would develop their requirements throw it over the wall to the IT design group would then throw it over the wall to the tech developers. By the time it came back it was like a game of Chinese whispers maybe you've got what you wanted but just as often you've got something completely different because something got lost in translation. The approach today having our technology and business teams sitting together working together creating together is increasingly streamlined and cohesive. Allowing us to innovate faster and deliver more effectively. It's how we create the energy that delivers the best results for our business and for our clients ultimately the driving forces behind this closer partnership. Our intellectual curiosity and mutual respect both the IT and business groups need to have a genuine interest in understanding how things are done by one another, and have a mutual respect for each other skill and dedication and professionalism at the end of the day if we think like a team and work as a team we will achieve like a high-performing team and everybody wins.

This model intends to explain how strategic alignment can be achieved using Enterprise Systems (as a dominant form of IT) through the lens of an Enterprise Architecture.

This model does not intend to depict the entire Enterprise Architecture of all, or even any single organization(s). Instead, it attempts to depict a visual and high level model explaining alignment between business strategy and IT (and specifically Enterprise Systems) through the lens of an Enterprise Architecture. So, while there could be different types and components of IT in an organization, this model only depicts the kind of IT for demonstrating strategic alignment of business and it can be achieved by traversing through these different layers.

The model is explained by breaking it down into its constituent layers namely technology layer, applications layer, business layer and motivation layer.

The Technology Layer

The technology layer, shown as a single level layer (TL1) shows the deployment of technology (specifically IT) that an organization has in place as a part of their IT platform. However, we limit our interest to the one node i.e. Enterprise System Platform. Enterprise Systems are used as the chosen type of IT. Enterprise Systems (ES) can be defined as large-scale, packaged, application software systems. These systems come in different forms, but the most dominant forms are the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM). As shown in the technology layer, Enterprise Systems are usually deployed with an application server that manages the software and an independent database server. This form of technological deployment of Enterprise Systems is widely witnessed irrespective of the vendor and the system.

The Applications Layer

The applications layer shows the IT applications that an organization has in place as a part of their IT portfolio and the services that it provides to them. The application layer is shown to consist of two levels: the application systems level (AL1) and the application services level (AL2). Irrespective of the vendor and the system, most Enterprise Systems are composed of in-built functional units called ‘modules’ that interact with each other to provide all the functionality. As shown in the applications layer, Such modules include Financials, Human Resources, Sales and Distribution, Materials Management, Production Planning and many others. Additional modules are available for specific industries like banking, Retail, Education, Mining and many others. The top part of the applications layer shows the different application services that are offered by the application(s) – in this case the Enterprise System. These application services offered are the provisions or capabilities that are realized by implementing and using Enterprise systems. It may be noted here that these application services will be realized upon (a) successful implementation (via one or more projects) and (b) effective use of the Enterprise System.

• Integration Data and Systems: Enterprise Systems provides the capability to unify and harmonize data and systems with an organization’s unique environment, and use the systems to better connect organizational units and processes, as well as customers and suppliers.
• Optimised and Standardized Processes: Enterprise Systems provides the standardization of processes using best practices embodied in the software, and shape processes to fit the unique or strategic needs of the business.
• Information and Analytics: Enterprise Systems also provides information in real-time and transforms data into context-rich knowledge that supports the unique business analysis and decision-making needs of multiple work forces.
• Multi-Country Support: Enterprise systems have built-in support for multiple currencies, multiple languages, and multiple global locations of business.
• Organizational Structures: Enterprise Systems support the setting up of organizational hierarchies and structures in a uniform and standardized way across the entire organization. This ranges from the corporate level (headquarters and branches) to business uni