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  • Introduction
  • Articulate Business Strategy and Align to IT
  • Define A Digital Strategy
  • Communicate Business Capability and Architecture
  • Streamline Project Delivery Through Common Understanding
  • Share and Unlock Corporate Information Silos
  • Build Collaborative Relationships
  • Reduce Enterprise Costs
  • Conclusion
  • Help Teams Become More Productive

Introduction

As companies move further into the digital age they face the increasing and ever persistent problem of information silos. The challenge to connect all the areas of the IT discipline to deliver business value and decrease the time to market is won or lost at the strategic level.

Deploying a strategy to implement a toolset specifically designed to enable sharing, control, collaboration and persistence of information, is the first step towards realizing the digital enterprise. Success inhibitors such as information silos, poor articulation of business strategy, and antiquated technology, are being eliminated by companies savvy enough to implement Enterprise Architect as their toolset. When asked, these companies position their tooling choice as a competitive advantage in their marketplace - read on to find out why.

Articulate Business Strategy and Align to IT

One critical success factor driving strategic business outcomes is for an organization to understand how they support the execution of their enterprise business strategy. However many organizations fail to do this because the enterprise business strategy either inarticulate or not published to the whole organization. Enterprise Architect allows capture and integration of a business strategy with IT projects and decisions in a clean, traceable format - unlocking the enterprise business strategy to the entire organization.

Enterprise Architect can help to:

  • Extract the information which defines an organizations strategic intent.
  • Allows the business executives to view the business strategy while it's being defined, kick starting discussions.
  • Define strategy maps that give a coherent view of the enterprise business strategy.
  • Develop a value chain map to reveal where real business value lies.
  • Create linkages from the strategy maps to all areas of the enterprise.

Define A Digital Strategy

According to Gartner research*, sixty percent of organizations report they have no effective digital strategy or have one that remains separate from their business strategy. Of those less than twenty percent of companies who have a digital strategy actually execute it!

Enterprise Architect can help to define and integrate an existing business strategy with a future looking digital strategy. It may be the case that some teams already use Enterprise Architect in their day to day work, this can be incorporated into a strategy at a high level. The organization then has the option to focus on each to see how each of the solutions align back to the business and digital strategy.

Enterprise Architect can help to:

  • Leverage current strategic pockets, combining them to unlock information silos.
  • Map all areas of the enterprise to incorporate into a digital strategy.
  • Publish a strategy and communicate it with others.
  • Integrate existing business and IT strategies into the one platform.
* Master the Six Essential Elements of a Digital Strategy

Communicate Business Capability and Architecture

Business Capability modeling is a great way to represent and communicate the future and current states of business operations. It is a powerful technique that can be used to engage and work with business executives. It defines what a company needs to be able to do to execute its strategy. Enterprise Architect's Strategic modeling capabilities allow you not only to define an enterprise architecture, but also a business capability and integrate the two. Giving the business modelers the same information and tools as IT enhances the knowledge integration of the enterprise allowing executives to make optimized and well informed strategic decisions.

Enterprise Architect can help to:

  • Define a Business Capability models using its built-in business profiles and technologies.
  • Define current and future state architectures.
  • Run a GAP analysis against the current and future state architectures and produce implementation plans.
  • Integrate business capabilities with enterprise architecture.
  • Present an accurate picture of the enterprise on which to base strategic decisions.

Streamline Project Delivery Through Common Understanding

Too many organizations have a heavy reliance on external IT service staff without proper strategies, controls and procedures in place. This results in a labor pool that is expensive and not fully utilized, and operates with little management oversight by the client organization. Enterprise Architect combines the requirements of the project in the same tool as the work is being performed, meaning there is complete traceability between the priorities & expectations, and the deliverables in development. There are also built-in features to manage the tasks individually, making sure each and every requirement is being realized. This creates more accurate and successful projects for organizations, reducing the cost of rework, even when teams are separated geographically.

Enterprise Architect can help to:

  • Trace from requirements to the enterprise architecture.
  • Manage resources of requirement implementation.
  • Connect team members even if they are in different locations around the world.

Share and Unlock Corporate Information Silos

Teams within organizations such as IT, Business and Management traditionally have their own information silos. Very little information is shared between these teams, and even then, it is done in a static way (documents, print-outs and the like). Enterprise Architect connects these silos so information can be traced from a management decision through the developed business processes and rules, down to the information technology deployment of the system. The complete process is documented as the work is being done. Everyone is speaking the same language and is on the same page.

Enterprise Architect can help to:

  • Connect and utilize organizational information silos.
  • Provide a traceability view of the enterprise from the strategic decision down to the deliverable.
  • Keep all information contributed in line with the strategy, for look-up and reference in future.

Build Collaborative Relationships

Success depends on others; every organization depends on its partners, stakeholders, employees, managers and customers. Working together can deliver outcomes that working alone often makes difficult. Enterprise Architect is built from the ground up as a communication tool between each and every entity within an organizations "ecosystem", regardless of geographic location.

Enterprise Architect can help define an ecosystem allowing:

  • Analysis and mapping of the actors and stakeholders in ecosystem
  • Business Capability modeling to identify the capabilities of each actor as well as their relationships and interdependencies.
  • Identify the decisions that need to be made and the information architecture that supports them.
  • Performance analysis to identify the measures and metrics needed to operate and modify the ecosystem.

Reduce Enterprise Costs

Most IT cost reduction efforts fail to consider Business and IT strategies; this can erode core IT competencies and capabilities needed for growth. When IT budgets and cost-tracking efforts don't keep pace with IT planning and restructuring; or other IT services that have been implemented as a result of the transformation efforts, then the enterprise cost can be substantial and unpredictable.

Implementing a tool like Enterprise Architect can give a broad view of the enterprise and allow you to conduct impact analysis of capability reduction, implementing new services or reducing costs to specific projects. When each part of the enterprise is mapped in a common tool, there is no disconnect been each division of the enterprise, meaning total cost of a strategy can be mapped and traced. Now companies can proceed with their cost reduction efforts and with the help of Enterprise Architect know the exact outcome and impact.

Enterprise Architect can help to:

  • Present Business and IT strategy in a language and format that is easily consumed.
  • Map competency based resources to areas of the enterprise.
  • Provide traceability and impact analysis of strategic decisions down to available resources.
  • Reduce the information disconnect between divisions and departments.
  • Predict the impact and outcomes of cost reduction efforts.

Conclusion

Organizations who have implemented Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect to define and execute their business strategy have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Their ability to align their business and IT ensures they are deriving outcomes from their architecture, while using the same platform to realize technology innovations and opportunities, all at a reduced cost of ownership.

Help Teams Become More Productive

With over 300,000 users around the world, chances are at least one or more of teams has a deployment of Enterprise Architect. Why? Because it does what it says on the label, and its very easy to get. IT, BA and Systems Engineering departments can outfit themselves with a copy of Enterprise Architect for around $200 a license. This means it is affordable enough for most organizations not to need a requisition form, or the team members have simply used their own credit card to purchase.

Within 4 minutes someone can browse the Sparx systems web site, purchase a key for download, install and become productive.

So how can you help teams become more productive?

One of Enterprise Architects main advantages is its ability to connect teams together, sharing Information so everyone is on the same page. Deploying Enterprise Architect throughout an entire enterprise does away with paper based specifications, requirements and reports (as they become out of date as soon as they are printed) and allows management to form a strategic view of the entire enterprise based on the real work teams are doing.

Teams get the tools they need to get the projects finished on time providing overviews, insights and strategic alignment of an entire enterprise.