What Is Enterprise Architecture and How Does It Help Your Business Soar?

Countless entrepreneurs set goals that fail because of their vague nature. But how do you translate an abstract vision into a concrete business strategy? More importantly, how do you determine halfway through whether you’ve actually made any progress in optimizing your business processes?

The answers to these questions increasingly lie in enterprise architecture (EA), not least because enterprise optimization is becoming more closely intertwined with technical innovation. It may seem reasonable to assume that the digital natives of the latest generations are progressively making the role of the enterprise architect redundant. However, statistics show that involvement from this role still has a positive impact on efficient management and service utilization.

That being said, the biggest challenge remains in successfully translating business goals and cultures into adapted models so they can contribute to measurable success in the long term. The yardsticks may change from case to case, but this makes it all the more important to look at the frameworks and building blocks that can ultimately be assembled into a coherent business strategy.

We explain the key terms and methodologies and guide you through the process of choosing the right EA for your objectives.

Understand How Enterprise Architecture Contributes to Your Business Goals

Unless your company remains untouched by the global economy, your enterprise goals consist of more than just the desire to make money. To stay in business, you constantly need to adapt to mergers, digital technologies, and privacy regulations and apply the appropriate risk management framework to match the environment. Every single business process is linked to a chain of information systems and commercial needs. The actual challenge lies in keeping track of goals in various categories, from sustainability to globalization.

The analogy with the construction industry can sometimes be misleading, because we don’t think of the way we live and interact with buildings. While architects in business and building both strive to give structure to a set of goals to build a solid foundation, the result in the corporate world is not an immovable structure. We may not be aware of it, but we interact with our enterprises, just like we do with buildings. It’s the business architect’s job to predict the most reliable path to get from theoretical business strategies to concrete execution.

Whether it’s through motivational exercises, operational frameworks, or financial analyses, these architects strive to bridge the gaps between different business sectors in an interdisciplinary manner. An enterprise architect links that strategy to the appropriate information technology (IT) infrastructure to support those optimization efforts. For this reason, you’ll often find the overarching discipline split into subcategories.

• Information architecture identifies an organization’s information needs and aims to streamline knowledge exchanges to support effective communication and decision making.
• Data architecture defines data standards and flows that foster consistent and accurate storage and management of company files and assets.
• Applications architecture aligns software with organizational requirements and streamlines application usage and integration to achieve a cohesive ecosystem serving business goals.
• Technology architecture ensures that the chosen hardware, software, and networking solutions support applications and the organization’s needs.

Enterprise architecture is the macro strategy connecting all these approaches to create an infrastructure that supports your business goals and processes with the right resources. Whether it’s through new equipment or professional services provided by associates, the goal is to predict how different sectors within your company will interact to contribute to those objectives. There are several situations where you can benefit from a tailored technology solution.

One of the greatest benefits of enterprise architecture is the ability to maintain standards and track missions in the face of rapid changes. This makes it the ideal solution for acquisitions or restructuring, and also for the increasing number of companies that have to deal with constantly updated legal requirements. During a business transformation, whether it’s a merger or an upgrade to a more scalable IT solution, enterprise architecture helps organizations leverage their digital assets to stay competitive.

Just like a lack of occupational safety or leaking pipes, legacy systems can quickly become a commercial risk. Enterprise architecture gives you a trustworthy framework for IT governance by defining clear responsibilities and scenarios reflecting your goals and regulatory requirements. For many companies, this makes it the cornerstone of an informed business strategy, predictive analytics, and risk management.

Learn From the Most Common Enterprise Architecture Frameworks in the Business World

With varying philosophies across industries, it’s no surprise that we can pick from a range of frameworks and ontologies to guide enterprises in their EA endeavors. Each follows a different school of thought and therefore caters to the specific needs of various corporate divisions in its own way.

Zachman Framework

During his involvement in IBM’s business system planning, John Zachman noticed that different departments slightly adapted the term “architecture” to make it suit their needs. In an effort to capture these diverse perspectives on the same situation in one overview, he developed a two-dimensional schema. Its goal is not to prescribe a predefined action path, but to illustrate who is linked to different business assets and procedures and in which way.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF)

Because it looks back on a history as a framework for technical architectures, the TOGAF Standard still has a strong focus on application, data, and technology infrastructure, even though its current version also covers business aspects. Due to its Architecture Development Method, it follows a different approach than the Zachman Framework. Rather than documenting the status quo, it outlines the requirements and stages of planning the future architecture. Although it’s not without critics, the heightened emphasis on change management does make it a more flexible option for fast-paced enterprises.

Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF)

While limited in practice to initiatives of the Office of Management and Budget, the FEAF can certainly be studied outside of the federal government for inspiration. Its main objective is to develop a shared taxonomy for describing investments, IT resources, and business operations. Due to its use across federal agencies, a strong focus on federal regulations and mandates is baked into the policies guiding the framework. The Data and Technical Reference Models provide the guidance needed for streamlined and standardized communications between different agencies and government departments.

Gartner Methodology

It’s no accident that this one is not called a framework or an ontology. If Zachman was about documenting the status quo and TOGAF focused on the transition to a successful EA, the Gartner Inc. offering focuses on constant progression. That’s why it doesn’t even start with the current situation but directions different departments are currently taking. The idea is to continuously correct course to react to unexpected changes. If anything, you could call it a rejection of frameworks.

No framework, system, or methodology can guarantee success across the board. The art lies in finding and adjusting one that meets your requirements and supports you in achieving your enterprise goals. Whichever EA you end up with, make sure it can scale with your operations and is tailored to your needs.

Design a Smart Strategy With the Right Goals for Your Organization

The irony is that you want to use EAs to better understand your business, but you already have to understand your operations to choose the right EA. Once you’re aware of this dilemma, you can work toward achieving that ideal usage by running a thorough needs assessment. Gathering information across different departments will give you an idea of the insights you hope to gain.

Try to attain a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s vision, mission, and strategic objectives. If they’re not codified yet, engage with key stakeholders to get the full picture. This process will help you stop treating an EA like a magic bullet. Instead, it’ll raise your awareness of your company’s current direction in relation to its overarching strategies. Once you have an idea of how higher-level goals are viewed through the lens of individual departments, it becomes easier to select the appropriate EA for your company structure and strategy.

Engaging with stakeholders across HR, finance, marketing, and other departments allows you to define SMART objectives, which can support you in choosing an EA. If you’re starting with high-level strategic planning or hope to improve cross-department communication, the Zachman Framework can be beneficial. If you’re undergoing complex digital initiatives while observing interoperability and regulations, TOGAF could offer more effective change management capabilities.

The point is, you shouldn’t implement enterprise architecture for its own sake. It should always align with a cross-departmental business strategy. Think of it as a personal trainer telling you on a daily basis how far to run or what to eat, so that you can finish strong on race day. The more goals you take into it, the more benefits you’ll get out of it. Therefore, it’s best to consider objectives across your entire company, from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) frameworks to sustainability management and budget plans. If you do that, an EA can help you react to market changes and track your progress.

Best Practices: Choose the Right Metrics for Models That Boost Results

As we have seen, the different models evaluate your business based on their own criteria. To ensure your EA brings results, you should clearly define the ROI of your architectural initiatives. The metrics you rely on to track it need to be uniquely tailored to your industry, the current state of your company and your personal philosophy.

Thanks to machine learning (ML), you can automate analyses that used to take up valuable resources and have your human analysts focus on more complex investigations. That’s why ML shouldn’t be considered an add-on to your EA but the foundation on which it needs to run to keep up with the pace of today’s business world.

If your plan is to improve your employees’ performance and resource allocation while addressing potential risks, a capability maturity model can assess your organization’s current practices and lay out a path for optimization.

To make your enterprise more agile or prepared for new competitors, it’s more relevant to focus on metrics that promise insights into production and service. Your time-to-market value shows you how long it takes your business to get from product conception to the launch phase. Other metrics may document your system uptime or response times to round off that picture.

It’s always worth documenting your technology investments or evaluating the ratio of innovative solutions your employees have already implemented. However, even for non-technical enterprises, upgrading legacy systems can contribute to better business relationships and customer service. Tracking rationalized and overlapping applications can support your EA in mitigating IT risks, which helps you to comply with regulatory requirements in turn.

 

Learn More About the Right Models for Your Organization

In the right hands and with an adequate understanding, EA can be a powerful strategic discipline that supports enterprises in translating their abstract visions into concrete strategies and benchmarks for long-term success. It supports you in aligning business objectives with processes and technology choices to create an optimized ecosystem for sustained success.

With the right EA for your company, you can connect various business sectors and IT infrastructure to achieve business objectives effectively. It can also help you combine strategic measures within standardization, tracking, and risk management into one cohesive approach. 

Different frameworks and methodologies like Zachman, TOGAF, FEAF, and Gartner will reflect the varying requirements coming with unique business structures and philosophies. That’s why you should base your choice on a comprehensive needs assessment to align your final business strategy with the requirements and goals of each department in your organization.

Make sure you update your measures and protocols regularly to stay competitive, for instance by embracing ML early on and treating it as the foundation of your strategy.

Incorporating EA with the right frameworks and metrics can empower your enterprise to stay agile and achieve measurable results. If you’d like to learn which model could be a good fit for your organization and objectives, get in touch with our expert team.