Enterprise Architecture (EA)is the most valuable, self-created asset for a company. When defining the business value of a company, the key areas of evaluation are enterprise architecture, most valuable clients, top-grossing products and innovations. Developing the aforementioned items in an active, passionate way is an essential part of the culture of an above-average organisation.
Enterprise Architecture Is Created Together with the Clients
Organisational culture that fails to adequately respect and appreciate enterprise architecture is doomed to lose its market share and its best employee assets to the competition. With time, the organisation will be left with unprofitable clientele, enterprise weak-performing products and services, as well as staff that are only happy within their comfort zones. Sectors that are subjected to monopolies due to regulations or other factors will have negative impacts on the society by taking away limited public resources from other operations. Improved enterprise architecture is always the result of the synthesis between the company and the requirements of profitable clients. This means that an organisation which allocates the responsibility for its enterprise organisation to persons who are not regularly interacting with the clientele does not utilise the potential of enterprise architecture in its business practices.
Enterprise Architecture Is a Straightforward Concept
The executive team discusses and makes decisions on the development of the enterprise architecture during its meetings. Successful organisations are extremely aware of this process, making the development of enterprise architecture their source of inspiration and passion. Successful organisations also acknowledge that the existence of enterprise architecture depends on the organisation’s ability to communicate and visualise it throughout the organisation. Enterprise architecture is a vital, inseparable part of business culture. Correct, efficient methods and tools that enable enterprise architecture are simple and easy to use.
A successful organisation does not attempt to create over-documented, multi-faceted science. A successful organisation understands the secret of simplicity. The illusion of enterprise architecture being an entity of process maps and data models is false. Essentially, enterprise architecture is how an organisation presents itself to its clientele and how it lays a foundation for its inspired staff to provide improved service. A strong causality exists between a high level of client and staff satisfaction in successful enterprise architecture.
Enterprise Architecture as the Driving Force of the Entire Organisation
Due to the fact that the development of enterprise architecture is a slow process, not a project or development programme, there is a danger for the organisation to be hijacked by its enterprise architecture. Slow trends and changes in the business environment may drive the organisation into a situation that requires measures and abilities that the organisation simply does not possess.
One way of avoiding this situation and the creation of development debt would be to actively steer the organisation via project, application, system and service portfolio management towards a direction that fits the needs of the clients. The strongest organisations are able to connect their enterprise architecture to that of their most successful clients, creating genuine value and the promise of continuing to produce value to the clients in the future as well. Enterprise architecture, like quality, is the responsibility of the entire organisation, and it must meet the demands and expectation of the clients.
