How to get started with Enterprise Architecture? Part 1/4: Business

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a hot topic both in public and private sector organizations. One of the reasons why interest for enterprise architecture is rising, is that world has become quite a complex place. Complexity costs, especially unplanned complexity, and therefore many organizations are seeking holistic, and systematic thinking approaches to clarify and simplify things. The promise and essence of enterprise architecture is to provide that kind of thinking and a tool for business planning and management.

A problem many organizations face when starting enterprise architecture work is where to start, and how to get started? Here is my simple three-point starting list how to begin your EA work regardless of your role in that work:

1. Understand. Start to understand your organization’s business. Read annual reports, investigate operating plans and have a look at your organization’s strategy and goals: what value and mission does your organization drive for? Ask, discuss, and look for more information about how your organization does its business.

2. Communicate. Have a dialogue with business and supporting units. When discussing about business, use common business language. If you are not familiar with business language, you need to learn the basic terms related to your business. Discuss with business people what are their thoughts, concerns and worries about running the business.

3. Network. Discuss and share thoughts with people in your organization who are the customers and suppliers of your organization, and find out if there are other interest groups your organization is collaborating with. Analyze the value network of your organization. If you don’t know something, ask people who knows. People in your organization are surely willing to answer if you just ask.

No matter if you are CEO, CIO, Enterprise architect, IT manager or a line worker in your organization; the same list applies to you all. If you are a consultant trying to help other organizations, again, the same list applies. Capture all your learnings, and you have a good starting point to create your first EA deliverable called Business Architecture. So, start your EA work from the things that really matter, that is, business.
 
Ari Anturaniemi
Chief Consultant, Enterprise Architecture

fi.linkedin.com/pub/ari-anturaniemi/3/572/a51/

Process improvement with hunch or facts

Traditionally, processes have been developed more or less based on a hunch that comes from often subjective viewpoints. By talking to people and manual modeling, you do get about 80% understanding as to how a process runs, or should run, and where the possible problems may lay. But it’s the unknown 20% of the process where most of the problems can usually be found. That 20% causes 80% of the process hassle so it’s vital to open that up and get it under control.

Data is the road to discover the unknown 20%. You get the data from business IT systems such as SAP. As most organisations have support systems which log data, so in principle, all those companies already have the possibility to benefit from that information by using process mining or automated business process discovery (ABPD) methodology (both terms are used for using data to improve processes).

Visualization of process based on data from the IT system

Usually data is looked at through BI goggles, which doesn’t tell anything about the actual process, only numbers. There are tools available that let you analyze the data in a process context and reveal surprising facts of the process performance.  Based on the experience of dozens of process mining projects we have done, customers are amazed what data can unveil and what development possibilities it provides. The biggest pain points can be found in Order to Cash and Procurement to Pay processes. The discoveries and benefits that our customers have gained include e.g. optimized raw material purchasing lowering the working capital levels and shortened process lead times after discovering the root causes for the bottlenecks.

Organisations today continuously battle to develop their processes and optimize costs. And to reach optimal results, In our opinion, organizations can’t afford not to use their existing data for process improvement. Thoughts?

Mika

fi.linkedin.com/pub/mika-leonsaari/3/359/495/