There is no doubt that digital transformation is a corporate trend since today it is not optional. However, the objective is to minimize the possibility of making the mistake of assuming that, because it is a fashion or necessity, it will work ideally in our company. Under the understanding that digital transformation is a means to capture value and is not an end per se. In this context, knowing the concept of Enterprise Architecture is essential to take the right steps in business transformation processes.
Business Architecture defines the relationships between the main resources of a company , such as: processes, people, culture, products, services, applications, technology, documents, among others. It is the framework that provides a common understanding of the organization and is used to connect strategy with tactical and operational requirements.
Essential points of Enterprise Architecture
- Strategy
- Resource-level capability : the business functions of the organization and the actors that execute them
- The processes: strategic, business and support processes (value chain)
- The organization and its knowledge: Know-how
- Culture and relationships: between roles, business units, areas; their responsibilities, empowerment and corporate attitude.
When analyzing what the main benefits of Enterprise Architecture are, TOGAF tells us:
- Cost optimization.
- Risk Mitigation.
- Identification of Opportunities / Competitive Advantages.
- Flexibility and Adaptation.
These benefits are ideal in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.
TOGAF has a definition of what an architecture is, in summary, it is “a formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of the system at the level of its components that guides its implementation”, or “the structure of components, their interrelationships, and the principles and guides that govern its design and evolution over time.”
TOGAF is based on four pillars:
- Business Architecture: defines the business strategy, corporate governance, structure and key processes of the organization. Simplicity without losing control is the primary challenge, without losing focus on change management when applicable.
- Application Architecture: establishes a context for each of the systems or applications that need to be implemented -always connected to the business-, the interactions between them and how they make up a cohesive ecosystem.
- Data Architecture: describe la estructura de los datos físicos y lógicos de la organización, así como los recursos de gestión de estos datos, su gobierno, integridad, confiabilidad y explotación.
- Technological Architecture: la cual describe la estructura de hardware, software y redes requerida para dar soporte e infraestructura eficiente al ecosistema de aplicaciones, con un foco especial en la seguridad.
Business transformation leveraged on digital solutions is an incremental process , in this sense it should favor agile validations. Before undertaking automation, aligning and understanding the aforementioned points is essential and on this premise proceed to seek early victories leveraged in technology. Approaching digital projects without an Enterprise Architecture analysis can maximize the likelihood of automating chaos and investing resources inefficiently.
Each company has its own reality and it must be analyzed which path best suits it according to its characteristics, capabilities, challenges, threats and continuous opportunities to capture value.
