Emerging Business Architecture
A&D companies need to strengthen their adaptive capabilities and make better use of emerging technologies
Adopting emerging technologies just for the sake of doing incredible things or to project IT capabilities without an underlying business-driven purpose is of no use. The organizations following this model may not sustain if the IT goals are not aligned toward strategic and tactical business goals, objectives, and outcomes that the business strives to achieve. Organizations that do not define the enterprise context will be significantly hindered in their ability to deliver real business value. The key to ensuring stakeholder alignment and bridging the gap between business and IT is a continuous Business Architecture practice that all stakeholders understand. Organizations must define their enterprise context foundation for integrating and aligning EA efforts with business strategy.
Reflecting on my own experience working with various stakeholders in the Business and IT groups, the rapid advancement of emerging technologies and the disruptive forces are evident in the Aerospace and Defense industry. The A&D sector faces enormous challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns over sustainability, disruptions from new technologies, heightened regulatory forces, and radically transforming ecosystems.
Current industry drivers such as
- airlines are reconsidering their business models and fleet sizes, growing niche markets, and trade-offs between costs for operation and maintenance and new planes.
- A&D companies are looking to strengthen their adaptive capabilities and better use emerging technologies to win in the marketplace.
A continuous and emerging business architecture practice is vital to
- identify and rapidly re-prioritize to adjust to new realities quickly,
- pivoting to new products and services to provide a safe cabin environment,
- achieve regulatory compliance.
- Identify production, supply chain, and technology evolutions to reduce costs from the traditional operational model and enable new models to come to the forefront.
References:
Burton, B.,& Allega, P (2021). EM Must Include Defining Your Enterprise Context. Gartner. March
Bernard, S. A. (2020). An Introduction to Holistic Enterprise architecture, 4th ed. AuthorHouse.
Profozich, G. 10 Emerging Aerospace Technology Trends You’ll Want to Know About. Retrieved from https://www.cmtc.com/blog/emerging-aerospace-technologies
changing role of EA and IT
As we slowly emerge from the pandemic world, companies will be looking to become much more digital at the core by transitioning from traditional enterprise to cognitive virtual enterprise. With digital everywhere, organizations focus on implementing open platforms and ecosystems, science and data-led innovation, open, secure hybrid cloud, and networks. However, the majority of the organizations are just beginning to prepare for the dramatic changes that will characterize the next generation of business. In working with our customers, it is my observation that the customers are struggling to define their strategic differentiation, experiment with multiple technologies, shift applications and infrastructure from legacy to new, and adapt the mindset skills of their people.
Strategy and execution are the priority focusing on delivering business value. Enterprise Architects spend a massive amount of time documenting information, collecting vast amounts of data, and developing strategic plans. However, skillful EAs prioritize execution over planning while investing time in continuous culture, process, and technology assessment. The expanding objectives of the enterprise architecture enable faster strategic decisions with clear targets and focus on modeling the future, ensuring reusability, promoting more rapid development, and accelerating the next generation of business, a cognitive enterprise.
A cognitive enterprise leverage data as the new currency to reinvent competitive positioning and create new market opportunities, often straddling organization and industry boundaries. Infuse end-to-end and front-to-back processes with exponential technologies to deliver exceptional outcomes and differentiation., Recognize new business platform will only succeed if it embeds a compelling experience while maximizing the full potential of ever-evolving, human-centric technology partnership.
References:
Bossert, O., and Van der Wildt, T. How enterprise architects need to evolve to survive in a digital world. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/how-enterprise-architects-need-to-evolve-to-survive-in-a-digital-world
Accelerating enterprise cognitive reinvention. Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/report/accelentreinvent
Shas,
This post is very heavy and interesting. I did a post on Design Thinking and it somewhat relates to your post on the Cognitive Enterprise. Like the cognitive enterprise, design thinking is customer focused with the goal of gaining a deep understanding of the customers, their experiences, and resulting needs. The idea behind design thinking is to use a five-step process to innovate. The process includes: 1) Empathize to understand the customer, 2) Define to synthesize findings into core requirements, 3) Ideate to discover a wide range of solution options, 4) Prototype to quickly iterate to an MVP, and 5) Test to iteratively build and refine the innovation. This process must also include any support needed for the innovation; whether it be operational, cultural, or other changes within the organization to enable the innovation to succeed.
It looks like the cognitive enterprise, does similar things as design thinking but it utilizes data and technology to understand the customer, enhance customer experiences, and gain competitive advantage in an automated way. It feels like automated design thinking that iteratively adjusts both customer experiences and knowledge worker experiences automatically based on sensed and calculated changes in the environment.
The article in Forbes shared that knowledge creation is the market differentiator, and it will create brand-new cognitive economies and businesses that lead the next evolution, and all this will be made possible through the foundation of the cognitive gene.
Thanks Shas, this is definitely one to look out for.
References:
Ramadoss, D. B. (2019, August 28). Council post: The cognitive enterprise: Activating cognitive DNA. Forbes. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/08/28/the-cognitive-enterprise-activating-cognitive-dna/?sh=1fda3d5258bf