The Benefits of Enterprise Architecture in Organizational Transformation

Abstract

Today, as organizations constantly adjust their activities to meet ever-changing circumstances, continuous business transformation is taking place. However, planning and steering this transformation can be a daunting task as complexity has been built into the organization over the years. Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been widely adapted as a planning and governance approach to manage the complexity and constant change, and to align the organization toward a common goal. This article studies the EA benefit-realization process by clarifying how EA benefits are realized. Specifically, the focus is on the strategies, resources, and practices which the EA benefits stem from. The findings, derived from an in-depth case study, show that the EA benefit-realization process constitutes a long, intertwined chain of activities. Organizations benefit from EA through various means: from the initiation, when comprehensive understanding starts to form, until years later, when measurable outcomes such as cost savings materialize. Suggestions on what to incorporate into EA programs are presented.

The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture: An Explanatory IS Theory

“…Since its inception, several different EA frameworks were developed from different perspectives and disciplines. Due to space limitations, we will mostly focus on the ZFEA, however, several works on the history, evolution, purpose of, and recent developments within EA are included as references [3,12,13,16,17,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. In Sect.…”

Enterprise Architecture and Organizational Benefits: A Case Study

“…Research validated the model using empirical research and proved the responses using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis [27]. Besides that, the benefits measurement of EA were presented by [4] to review EA implementation and post-evaluation environment. The paper presented interesting facts gathered by using interviews.…”

“…Therefore, the concept is changing from traditional business to digitization, where cloud servers, big data, internet of things, and mobile technologies are producing positive impacts on digital business [3]. Whereas this transformation is a complex process for the enterprises due to the strong binding and bridging between the business models and the large number of IT resources and information systems (IS) [4]. The business models applied in traditional IS can be overlooked during the transformation phase if did not plan it well.…”

“…EA benefits realization is mostly supported by qualitative analysis, as most of the measuring criteria are multi-dimensional and non-quantitative, as mentioned in Table 1. The idea of the interview instrument is used by different researchers who elaborate the analysis by providing important quotes given by the stakeholders who participated in the investigation [4,28,29]. In summary, the EA implications can be categorized in multiple directions, such as it can help to improve process management [22]; EA creates a proper documentation for services, modeling, and other items [30]; EA supports IT resource allocation and management to handle all business processes [15].…”

Towards Enterprise Technical Architecture for the Implementation of the South African NHI

“…In the context, there is a need to examine the relationship between architects and other stakeholders [40]. The development helps clarify the deployment and use of IS/IT solutions, which include processes, technical platforms, such as servers and databases, and of their mutual dependencies [57]. The development of the ETA provide insights into processes, available IS/IT solutions, and integrations methods [43].…”