What is an Enterprise Architecture?

An enterprise architecture is a comprehensive decomposition a business, its associated processes, the supporting business systems, and the technologies that the business systems run within. An enterprise architecture is similar to a map or wiring diagram, connecting an organization’s business functions and processes with its systems and technology components. An enterprise architecture provides a detailed picture or blueprint of an organization, documenting the state of people, process and technology investments within and outside of the organization and the organization’s current and future, or desired, states.  It allows organizations to plan and make wise investments in both the business and technology with greater consistency and efficiency.

Why is an Enterprise architecture important?

Developing anything complex requires organization. An enterprise architecture allows an organization to align their technology investments with the organization’s strategic business direction. Companies that use enterprise architectures are more efficient and effective. With an enterprise architecture, company personnel can better understand how their organization works, measure performance and maximize the use of information technology ( IT) resources. Without an enterprise architecture, an organization is left with disparate, nonintegrated systems that are not orchestrated to meet the needs of the business.  An enterprise architecture provides a blueprint which an organization can tactically execute within to accomplish strategic directives.

Why do I need an Enterprise Architecture?

The primary reason for developing an enterprise architecture is to support the business by showing the inter-dependencies between the fundamental technology and process structures to derive a business-aligned IT strategy. This in turn makes IT a responsive and optimized asset for business strategic initiatives. An enterprise architecture provides a strategic context for the evolution of the IT systems in response to the changing needs of the business environment. Good enterprise architecture provides the right balance between IT efficiency and business innovation. It allows individual business units to innovate safely in their pursuit of competitive advantage. At the same time, it assures the needs of the organization for an integrated IT strategy, permitting the closest possible synergy across the enterprise.

What are the benefits of an Enterprise Architecture?

• Align Business and IT objectives in an organization.
• Efficient and timely support for business processes that include achieving fast speed to market and/or operations for new business initiatives.
• Maximize the ability of the IT organization to meet the needs of the business while minimizing the costs to achieve these benefits.
• Facilitation of increased interoperability between separately developed application systems - both within and outside the enterprise.
• Differentiate between business ‘needs’ and ‘wants’
• Increased agility of the IT system and technology components to accommodate unforeseen new or changed business requirements, organizational changes, and changing markets.
• A framework for the facilitation of necessary business process re-engineering.
• Ensuring of maximum longevity/reuse of system and technology components.
• Reduction of need for radical change in terms of IT system and technology, services, applications, management.
• Maximization of opportunities for exploitation of corporate information/data assets.
• Increased survivability of information/data and other assets, especially on change of supporting technology and/or service provider - i.e. avoiding 'lock-in'.
• Ensuring suitable support to users, whether internal or customers, including appropriate availability and ease of use.

How do I get started?

Begin the process by assessing your organization and  creating a current blueprint of your organization across the four enterprise views of: key business functions, the operational processes that support these functions, the business systems that support the processes and finally the technology footprint where the business systems are deployed. 

Next, identify the key business drivers and technology guiding principles that exist and will exist in your organization over the next one to three years.  Use this information to design a conceptual ‘to-be’ blueprint of your organization across the four enterprise views. 

Using the current and conceptual ‘to-be’ blueprints together, create a transitional roadmap that describes the tactical projects necessary to change the organization and move it towards the  ‘to-be’ design.  The roadmap will also capture thematically, the areas of change that are necessary as well as the inter-dependency between the various projects necessary for the transition.

The picture below illustrates BTE’s model for bridging the gap between the business and technology within an organization and building enterprise architectures.  We assist our clients by beginning with the assessment described above within the context of an organization as described below.  BTE can usually accomplish the initial assessment within three weeks depending on the scope of the organization.

Please contact our Headquarters offices in Buffalo Grove if you would like to get started or require more information.