Enterprise Architecture & Ecommerce

Accelerating the delivery of business value within the enterprise.

Scaling Enterprise Architecture to Support the Ripple Effect

In today’s climate of business transformation it may feel like organizations are focusing more resources than ever before on big digital initiatives. Whether it be developing new business models to digitally disrupt, implementing enhancements to become more data-driven or expanding customer relationship capabilities, enterprise architects must take steps to ensure the new vision of the business doesn’t overwhelm the often limited IT infrastructure that is relied upon to provide support for these initiatives.

To ensure these initiatives are successful, enterprise architects must identify the dependencies between strategy, capabilities, financial, business and operating models. Changes made to support these new initiatives can cause ripple effects that create dependencies and business design adjustments in other areas (Zhang, Moyet, et. al., 2020).

The ripple effect of new initiatives (see chart below) can be difficult to track, especially for large-scale enterprise with multiple business units and complex, matrixed resource structures. To manage this, architects should consider abandoning manual, static methods of modeling and analysis (e.g. Visio, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) and consider adding an Enterprise Architecture Management Suite to its toolset.

Five examples include (in no particular order):

These platforms offer many benefits to the enterprise architect but one in particular is the ability to create dynamic, data-driven models which help clearly identify which IT resources will be required to support the future-state after these digital transformations are implemented.

Some examples of benefits of these data-driven models include:

  • Generate one-click views of all IT infrastructure (e.g., servers, hardware, networks) that are impacted by the organization’s current and future states.
  • Generate one-click views of all human resources, including down to the individual, that are impacted by the organization’s current and future states.
  • Create an interface to enable governance so the aforementioned resources have clear visibility into the changes being proposed in the future state, all in one easy to visualize and manage platform.

Ultimately, an Enterprise Architecture Management Suite would also give architects an easier ability to ensure IT resources are sufficiently staffed to meet the future needs of the business by providing better views of all the processes and applications they are required to support. Oftentimes these types of views are overlooked and, as a result, new capabilities are implemented without consideration of the ripple effect to downstream resources, which may include employee burnout or failure of these initiatives to deliver upon their promise.

References:

The Next Digital Frontier: Employee Experience (EX)

We’ve heard the stats: an estimated 9 million Americans quit their jobs in just two months from September to October in 2021 — a phenomenon dubbed the Great Resignation. Reasons for the exodus vary from COVID-related burnout to an increased childcare burden to aggressive government assistance programs. One thing is clear, however: the war for talent has shifted the balance of power to skilled employees who are currently in high demand in the marketplace.

As a result, organizations must re-think how they enable their employees to perform their day-to-day activities. Like digital transformations initially focused first on B2C and then B2B customers, organizations must now think about the experience being delivered to their employees.

IT executives, who are typically tasked with establishing the tools and resources that enable employees to perform their jobs, will have to consider the effect cumbersome hardware and processes have on employee attraction and retention, including:

  • Home Office Accommodations (laptops, monitors, headsets, etc.)
  • Cell Phones
  • Security and Authentication
  • Internet Connections
  • Work Interfaces

Enterprise architects will need to do their share, as well, by ensuring they develop personas for those employees who will be doing the administration of their future-state solutions. Cumbersome work interfaces will lead to frustration and burnout if they find it difficult to perform these day-to-day activities to support their business processes.

According to Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2021 (Burke, Karamouzis, et al., 2021), “organizations have an opportunity to do more to engage, enable and delight people.  They can use a total experience strategy to improve the experience of customers, partners and employees.”

Pre-COVID, project teams invested heavily in the B2C experience with the down-stream B2E experiences were an afterthought, if considered at all. Companies who win the talent war will not take their employees’ experiences for granted and thoughtfully integrate EX into the design of their future-state organization.

References:

Al Jazeera (10 Jan 2022). The Great Resignation is spawning a talent war. Who will win it? Aljazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/10/the-great-resignation-is-spawning-a-talent-war-who-will-win-it

Burke B., Karamouzis F., et al. (19 October 2020). Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2021. Gartner.
https://www.gartner.com/document/3991906?ref=solrAll&refval=293374388