Business transformations are continually taking place to adapt with constantly changing circumstance faced internally and externally by many organizations. If improperly managed, business components and supported technology plan in a bubble, leading to misuse of resources, lack of infrastructure alignment and even duplicated efforts. In the long term, this can be more costly to many organizations. However, the business value of EA provides a strategic approach to drive business activities, directly supporting management planning and decision-making through coordinated views of the entire enterprise. EA establishes a holistic approach to view current and future state to develop the transitional roadmap to achieve organization objectives. Without EA implemented it becomes difficult to identify current resources, gaps and capabilities that span across the enterprise, resulting in failure of anticipate future requirements. EA implementation focuses on the framework and methodology to drive business-driven outcomes that is enabled by technology. A successful EA program will be costly and time consuming at first, requiring involvement from leadership/ key stakeholders and diverting resources. However, the benefits far out way the risks once established. EA implementation can create standardized solutions across multiple lines of business, improving business architecture across the enterprise, referred to as architecture segments. These architecture segments ensure the greatest coverage and adaptability across the enterprise, allowing for improved efficiency and greater return on investment. EA is designed to model and improve the performance of organizations by enabling comprehensive views of strategic direction, business practices, information flows and technology resources.
“The whole idea behind business architecture is finding business solutions that solve current problems so you can align with and consistently deliver business strategies.” – Lucidchart
Similarly, to Enterprise Architecture methodologies and frameworks, Business Architecture focuses on how business functions, processes and technology connect with and interact with enterprise architecture. The purpose of business architecture it to solve current problems that align with business strategies and goals. Business architecture is designed to support the process, workflows, and procedures necessary to align business capabilities with enterprise architecture. A Business architect works with senior management and other key stakeholders to analyze current business models, structures, processes, strategies, and capabilities to better understand and determine where improvements can be made. Emerging technology is changing how business operate and influencing business architecture methodologies. A recent wave of business have turned to service oriented solutions to support a particular niche, while maintaining a level of agility to support customers needs. This same idea requires enterprise architects to develop capabilities that support the technique for improving communication and collaboration among enterprise architecture, business people and IT people. Capabilities focus on the same idea, providing a specific function or service to deliver business value.
References:
A. (2018, November 29). The business value of EA: a data-driven approach. Ardoq. Retrieved July 7, 2023, from https://www.ardoq.com/blog/the-business-value-of-ea-a-data-driven-approach
Bernard, S. (2020). An Introduction to Holistic Enterprise Architecture: Fourth Edition (4th ed.). AuthorHouse.
Building a Business Architecture. (n.d.). Lucidchart. https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/building-a-business-architecture
Burton, B. (2012). Eight Business Capability Modeling Best Practices Enhance Business and IT Collaboration. Gatner.
Niemi, E. (2019, June 19). The Benefits of Enterprise Architecture in Organizational Transformation. SpringerLink. Retrieved July 7, 2023, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-019-00605-3?error=cookies_not_supported&code=f87322d0-dc49-4846-ab09-864d7e0a5f2d