Many companies have understood the value of running their business in line with enterprise architecture principles. They`ve come to see that enterprise architecture confers long-term competitive advantage, and that it can drive and become central to strategy, make sense of IT, and assist in visualising the impact of change before it happens.
In other words, the task of evangelisation has been done, and these companies have got it: enterprise architecture can help them cope with areas of their business that have been causing significant discomfort, and it can help make them more competitive and profitable.
Yet they hold off on embarking on their own enterprise architecture, claiming they`re not ready.
Executives at these companies believe they can continue with business as usual, and `do enterprise architecture` at some time in the future.
But every month they delay their enterprise architecture, is a month they are slipping back relative to their local and international competitors which have gone this route.
We have seen repeatedly that enterprise architecture represents the ultimate in competitive advantage for organisations of all sizes.
Stuart MacGregor is MD of Real IRM.
This is thrown into sharp focus by a book released by Harvard Business Press late last year, "Enterprise Architecture as Strategy". This book highlighted that companies which digitise their core business processes, set and fulfil their strategy, and drive their operations along enterprise architectural principles achieve a number of benefits:
* They are more profitable than their competitors.
* They are more easily able to align business and IT, reduce the cost of IT by up to 40% and identify return on investment on IT.
* They can more easily cope with change, including new regulatory compliance, new IT systems, mergers and acquisitions, and expansion into new territories.
* They can standardise processes, manage complexity, and reduce risk and costs.
In the case of GM, the savings realised have totalled $1 billion a year for five years. This was in part due to application reduction: from 7 000 down to 3 000. Had GM procrastinated on enterprise architecture, it would not have been able to save $5 billion.
Key advice for any company holding back on a decision on enterprise architecture:
* Understand that this is not a project, but rather a new way of doing business.
* Commit from the beginning to building an internal ability to deliver a sustainable, business-appropriate enterprise architecture, contracting an external consultancy where required.
* Obtain the strong and passionate commitment of management, with one executive, in particular (ideally the CEO), mandated to champion the enterprise architecture.
* Seek an area of corporate pain, one which can be addressed relatively quickly and visibly, and ensure value is delivered and communicated.
* Lay a solid foundation from the beginning, building high-quality models which can be reused.
* Link the exercise to corporate governance, without which the exercise can be seen as merely academic.
We have seen repeatedly that enterprise architecture represents the ultimate in competitive advantage for organisations of all sizes.
Procrastinating is not an option, not when competitors are moving ahead of the company every day a decision is deferred.
* Stuart MacGregor is MD of Real IRM.
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