Enterprise Architecture as Strategy

Executive Summary This report is an examination of change process prompted by MEG International, a large and reputable Finnish IT organization. This report explains Enterprise architecture and how it can be applied as a strategy. It explains Coachman's â€Å"framework for enterprise architecture† (Coachman, 1987) and the components of its two dimensional matrix.Criticism that Coachman framework is only a taxonomy follows on identifying next framework â€Å"The Open Group Architecture Framework† (known as TOGA) and it's criticism that can act as architectural process rather than a framework, this report recommends to apply Coachman Framework for economy and TOGA as architectural process for MEG to implement Enterprise architecture as strategy. This report then follows on defining Re-engineering process from the key organizational change perspective.The report follows on the next section explaining the critical risks to re-engineer an organization and how to make sure the re- engineering process has been implemented successfully. While analyzing the implementation of re-engineering process this report introduces Muckiness's seven â€Å"S† (Systems, Structures, Staff, Skills, Strategy, Style, Shared Values). The next section f the report then provides the Justification that change is inevitable in an organization and identifies four main reasons for it.Although most people said MEG international is successful, its poor profit results, poor management practice and lack of communication and teamwork contrasted those statements. 1. 1 Enterprise Architecture as strategy Enterprise architecture is the practice of applying a comprehensive and rigorous method for describing a current and future structure and behavior for an organization's processes, information systems, personnel and organizational sub- units, so that they align with the organization's core goals and strategic direction (Shaw, 2007).Similarly, Coachman (1987) describes enterprise arc hitecture as it is to pep the business from disintegrating; the concept of information systems architecture is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity. Enterprise is an independent, standalone entity comprising set of business functions and architecture is the underlying framework that provides the ground for the enterprise to operate efficiently to achieve organizational goals.The primary purpose of creating enterprise architecture is to ensure that business strategy and IT investments are aligned and provide long-term view of a company's processes, systems and technologies (Ross, Well & Robertson, 2006). Enterprise architecture is important because organizations need to adapt increasingly fast to increased competition, changing customer requirements, and business goals. Since MEG international was showing signs of reduction in sales and threatening market position by foreign competition were perfect examples that MEG was not adapting to rapidly changing environments.Thi s need for adoption has influence over the entire business processes; change in one business process may influence other business process. To keep enterprise architecture coherent, change should be managed accordingly in all architectures, and the relations between different architecture just be clear so it is vital for MEG to implement enterprise architecture as a strategy to be able to gain competitive advantage. Main difficulty in adopting enterprise architecture as strategy is to match business architectural alignment and IT alignment because of the differences in architectural modeling methods.Business analysts build complex business process models; similarly IT architects can design complex applications. These two groups of people may be best at what they do but they lack common language to understand each other's design. Mona Lisa although being Information Systems consultant didn't have he leadership capacity or vision on how she is going to approach the issue of aligning th ese two processes, or what framework to use for the enterprise architecture and what IT strategy to choose to move forward towards the change process.Some of the well known examples of enterprise architecture frameworks that can help to build the strategies around enterprise architecture in MEG are: Coachman's â€Å"framework for enterprise architecture† (Coachman, 1987) (Figure 1): This framework is a logical structure for classifying the different perspectives involved in enterprise architecture in a two dimensional matrix that are significant to TTS stakeholders.The matrix consists of levels or player perspective (scope or planner, business model or business owner, system model or designer, technology or builder, detailed representations or subcontractor and Functioning Enterprise) and six columns or aspects (data, function, network, people, time, motivation). From the Business owner perspective â€Å"data† represents information about customers, products, suppliers and relationships between these entities (Session, 2007).On the other hand â€Å"data† from the perspective of technical person implementing the database is rows and columns in tables which are linked together by Joins (Session, 007). If we move left to right on the grid we see different system descriptions from one player view whereas if we move from top to bottom it changes the different player perspective of viewing the system descriptions. Both perspectives are therefore critical for understanding the system's architecture that Coachman tries to address in his architecture.There are some criticisms about this framework that it itself doesn't define the methodology of the framework and is a complex process and can be applicable for large organizations only. This framework mainly acts as a template where goals, ales, processes, materials, roles, locations and events that organizations require must be filled in. Session (2007) argues that â€Å"the Coachman Framework is ac tually taxonomy for organizing architectural artifacts (I. E. Design documents, specifications, models) that takes into account both who the artifact targets (e. G. Business owner, builder) and what particular issue (e. G. , data, functionality) is being addressed†. The Open Group Architecture Framework (known as TOGA) (Figure 2): This framework mainly has four components such as: business architecture, application architecture, data architecture and technical architecture. Business architecture explains how business processes are aligned to meet the organizational goals.Application architecture describes how the applications are designed and explains the relationship between industry wide applications. Similarly Data architecture explains how the enterprise data are stored and accessed and finally technical architecture is responsible for explaining the interactions between software and hardware infrastructure. It mainly relies on already existing, proven technologies and pro ducts and tries to give a well-tested overall starting model which can be further extended.Although TOGA describes itself as â€Å"framework†, Session (2007) categorized TOGA as architectural process rather than an architectural framework. Session (2007) further extends Coachman explains how to categories the artifacts and TOGA gives the process to create them. So for an organization like MEG international Toga's Architecture Development Method (ADAM) (Figure 3) provides a strategic process for moving from generic to specific enterprise architecture.Therefore taxonomy like Coachman and an architectural process like TOGA seem very much appropriate for MEG to adapt Enterprise Architecture as strategy. . 2 Re-engineering Re-engineering could also be interpreted as reverse engineering or radical redesign of a business process which disregards all the traditions and assumptions of the past business processes or procedures and develops new one aiming to leap forward in performance and this seems essential for MEG International.Reengineering process involves in identifying the characteristics of an already engineered product or services and the processes involved in developing those, then redesigning all the processes from the scratch to improve current productivity or customer satisfaction. Hammer & Champs (1993) describe business re-engineering as the â€Å"fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of an entire business system to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance. Reengineering is most often called business process reengineering which is aimed to accomplish tremendous changes within an organization and underpins all the possible outcomes to maintain a true competitive advantage among the competitors. Reengineering focuses on identifying and abandoning outdated rules and assumptions and creating new rules, work methods and workflow to achieve organizational goals aiming to increase productivity, product quality and customer satisfaction drastically. Firstly company need to identify the problems and what can be the solutions to fix them.If that cannot be fixed by some other meaner or change process then a basic re engineering model must be developed, then company's core processes should be redesigned and final stage is to adopt the new design. Re-engineering is not a simple task to accomplish, it requires fundamental rethink and radical redesign of business processes. For effectiveness it requires structured and analytic approach to generate aromatic improvements in cost reduction, quality improvements, customer satisfaction, speed etc. Epic] Reengineering (Hammer & Champs, 2003, p. 2) Companies that are in deep competitive differences with their competitors, companies who have managers who can see problems arising like MEG and start on re-engineer the business before all their competitive advantage are wiped off. Hammer and Champs (1993)g's rhetorical question of reengineering is that â€Å"If I were re-creating this company today, given what I know and the current level of technology, what would it look liker.Focus on fundamentals, radical redesign element, the potential for dramatic results and business process orientation must be addressed while answering the question. Fundamentals like what the organization does, why it is done that way, what are the tactical aspects, should be addressed while designing re-engineered process â€Å"what should be†. Superficial changes and quantum leap in performance is the must while re-engineering not only marginal enhancements and improvements. These changes should address current business process, plus implement improved and simplified processes that improve value to he customer. . Critical risks to re-engineer organization and successful change implementation Re-engineering the organization processes or business process reengineering (BPR) can produce drastic change and improvement in the organizational processes if implemented suc cessfully. However if it is not implemented correctly it will not work as advertised and fail to meet the high expectations. Recent surveys show that about 70% BPR fail and some organizations that have put massive effort in BPR are only able to gain marginal benefits (Davenport, 1993).These figures indicate that re- engineering has high risk but also organizations are ready to take the risk because the output when executed efficiently can be astounding. Some of the risk that could derail BPR process can be no support from senior managers, focusing on automating current processes before reengineering process is identified, making technology alone dependent on change process and not identifying the limitation of the current Information technology infrastructure.Other directly impacting difficulties that BPR can face involves employee resistance to change, not addressing employee concerns, schismatic of strategy & goals, lack of leadership oversight and commitment. Including all these risks main critical factor is that organization must be truly committed to change in the re-engineering process with full support of senior level management. At Meg international even though Latino thought that everyone would be excited by the prospects of organizational change, only few expressed any enthusiasm for understanding general management.Most of the divisional heads were not clear on what re-engineering process is and were misinterpreting the concept in their own words which created an anxiety among most of the employees which resulted in loss of number of good technical staff. These were clear signs that most of the divisional heads were not ready to help in the re-engineering process that was very bad sign for Mona Lisa to start with. Since the BPR is a high risk process and involves high level of tasks to achieve, it can never be one man Job; it stresses the use of team throughout the process.Lisa however didn't show any initiative in having a team; as a result her rig orous efforts were wasted and ultimately lead to her resignation. If I was in her position then my first priority of this project could be to create team of experts from different parts of organization to understand the business processes and technical infrastructure, and hire few members in the team from outside who have better understanding of re-engineering process who will be responsible for explaining the management team what re-engineering actually is and what we are planning to achieve.It is unlikely that an organization can ignore the existing infrastructure and implement a process from scratch. It is more realistic to acknowledge the resources available and any real constraints and develop fundamental understanding of their implications on the process redesign (Davenport, 1993). After the process is redesigned, available Information Technology should be used to facilitate the implementation of new process that rules out the possibility of technology to be the limited factor .While process re-engineering is not a technology endeavourer, IT is recognized as having a critical role to play in re- engineering efforts, primarily as an enabler of new operational and management processes (Davenport and Short 1990; Hammer and Champs 1993; Davenport 1993). However, IT in itself cannot be held responsible for the ultimate success or failure of the business strategy. When skillfully applied, IT can provide support for the intermediate processes that taken together comprise the execution of an organization's strategy.Since organization's culture is an important aspect and cannot be ignored in the change process, the framework that I will be using during re-engineering process is Muckiness's seven S diagram (Figure 4) because it encapsulates the key components of an organization and has Shared Values (or Culture) at its centre. 2. 1 Systems:- These are the processes, methods, procedures, rules, techniques, technology, manuals, etc. That ensures that work is undertak en efficiently and accurately. These are the essential part of an organization to guide the management and staff.Therefore key to BPR process is to understand current systems and redesign them, often as Davenport (1993) highlights, new processes are enabled by new technology which ultimately engages employees to learn new techniques. 2. 2 Structures:- After the key processes are redefined, the next step would be to restructure the organization to match along these processes. The new form of organizational structure that aims to break the traditional types of structure, particularly bureaucratic and divisional structures is required.Hammer & Champs (2003) recommend â€Å"a move to much flatter structures organized around the processes†, whereas Davenport (1993) recommends â€Å"a multidimensional matrix structure, with process responsibility as a key dimension† (p 160). To achieve this, Johansson et al (1993) states: â€Å"the new organization must accommodate a balanc e between functional expertise and process involvement† and goes on to say it is essential to remove functional barriers (IPPP). 3 staff:- As per Henley (1991) Staff is â€Å"the quality and quantity of people employed† and manager has the role of â€Å"motivation, reward systems, the structure of Jobs and team work† (pop). Davenport (1993) expresses â€Å"gain-sharing† (Pl 10), â€Å"lateral promotion†, upgrade from â€Å"role title to process title† (Pl 1 1), and interesting and challenging through â€Å"work role rotation†, he believes â€Å"encourages employees to redesign the processes to eliminate their own Job†. In contrast to Davenport's expression BPR to some extent will be involved in down-sizing and right-sizing the workforce. 2. Skills:- Henley (1991) defines skills as â€Å"The competences the organization needs in its people in order to perform difficult tasks to a high standard† (pop). The BPR redefines the roles that should enhance and provide space for skills development where Hammer & Champs (1993) add â€Å"New World of Work† where â€Å"Jobs change from simple tasks to multi-dimensional work†. This meaner â€Å"Job preparation changes from training to education, from rule following to exercising Judgment† and â€Å"manager's change from supervisors to coaches† and â€Å"executives change from scorekeepers to leaders†(p 169). . 5 Strategy:- The main task in BPR is to discover the organization's strategy and â€Å"of what drives competitive advantage in a particular industry; the industry's value chain and the basis for competition, and how a particular company seeks to gain competitive edge† Monsoon et al 1993, pop). BPR decisions and strategic decisions involving new processes new structure and new staff mindset is extremely difficult to achieve but managers should be trained to articulate their â€Å"Process vision† driven by â₠¬Å"Business Strategy† Davenport (1993, Pl 27). 2. Style:- By style Henley (1991) meaner â€Å"the philosophy, values and shared beliefs adopted y managers in their use of power† (pop). BPR should be able to change the way things are done in the organization and behavioral changes. â€Å"Process innovation involves massive change, not only in process flows and the culture surrounding them, but also in organizational power and controls† (Davenport, 1993, Pl 3). 2. 7 Shared Values:- Andrews & Stack (1994) state that in â€Å"successful reengineering business operations, individual belief systems become aligned with the stated beliefs of the organization† (Pl 15).Reengineering will definitely have a big impact on the cultural specs of an organization under new processes, structure, staff role, management strategy and style but â€Å"re-engineering demands that employees deeply believe they work for their customers, not for their bosses†(Hammer & Champs, 1993, pop). BPR should establish new process teams linked by common values where employees must believe in self empowerment, self management and rewards based on skills must be used.Following this structure would provide me path to develop perfect strategy that would enable me to lead my team to successful re-engineering process at MEG international that would significantly improve the performance of the equines processes. Change is inevitable in an organization, the organizations unable to keep up with the change; cannot match up with the fast changing market and their survival will be in question. There are many things, events, or situations that occur in an organization or its external environment that affect the way a business operates, either that can be positive or negative.To cope with these occurrences, situations or events; every organization has to fundamentally alter the way they do business. Thus we can say the statement ‘Change is an ever-present feature of organ izational life, both at an operational and strategic level. Therefore, there should be no doubt regarding the importance to any organization of its ability to identify where it needs to be in the future, and how to manage the changes required getting there. Consequently, organizational change cannot be separated from organizational strategy, or vice versa' is very true.There are mainly four reasons that organizations need to changes that can be market changes, increased competition, external forces, and internal forces. 3. 1 Market changes The international demand for quality products, low prices, better service and increased level of client satisfaction are the key for the organizations change the way they do business in current global economy. To match these ever changing needs companies are forced to form collaborative arrangements, cooperative ventures and even alliances.Social and political pressures have always been there for the organizations. Employee values, needs, prioriti es and their motivations are always influenced by the political and social events. To match up with their needs it's essential for managers to adjust their management styles and arrange comfortable environment for employees. . 2 Increased competition In past where there were technology was not advance enough and there was less global competition with slower moving business environment where change occurred incrementally and infrequently.But now challenges organizations face is different, globalization has created both opportunities and challenges forcing firms to make drastic changes not only to compete but to survive in the market. Globalization is basically driven by technological advances, international economic integration and domestic market maturation (cotter 1996). Even companies operating in small entries can feel the impact of global competition. 3. 3 External forces External driving forces are those kinds of situations or events that occur outside of the company and they a re beyond the control of an organization.External forces can be expressed under these sub-classifications: Demographic Characteristics: The change in population and their density come under this classification that can trigger organizational changes. This mainly includes changes in age, gender, race, and increase in diversity. Technological developments: In current business environment technology plays vital role in any organization. The Internet has revolutionized the way in which information is exchanged, communication facilitated and commerce conducted.Technology is rapidly changing and effective management demands more knowledge in these areas in order for companies to manage their resources and develop, maintain or keep their competitive edge. It is essential for organizations to adapt technology to improve productivity and market competitiveness. Since technology is fastest changing entity, any business missing to follow the technological changes might loose their competitiven ess or wiped off completely from the market. . 4 Internal Forces Internal driving forces are those kinds of situations or events that occur inside the company and they controlled if there is proper initiative taken.Internal forces can be expressed under these sub Human resource factors: -classifications: People change more frequently and they bring in their changed perceptions in the organizations. Their perceptions about the work and work environment, their expectations from their managers and colleagues, flexibility and balance between work and their life etc could act as important factor for organizational change. To increase employee motivation, and improve their commitment and education towards work, their stresses, sources of conflict, work overload, and ambiguity need to be identified and eliminated.Managerial behavior/decisions: Excessive interpersonal conflict is often a clear sign that change is needed. Due to the important role of the manager in introducing and managing c hange in the organization, skills training and capacity building programmed for both manager and employee might be necessary. It is suggested that a better strategic approach to change is where organizations and heir people continually monitor, sense and respond to external and internal environment in small steps as an ongoing process (Burners, 2004).Early model of change was developed by Lenin (cited in Burners 2004, p. 985) consisting of three- stage process. First stage is â€Å"unfreezing† which is mainly aimed at overcoming or dismantling the existing â€Å"mind set† that are resisting change. Secondly the change implementation which can be of lot of confusions where old ways are challenged and new ideas have not been fully stable. Final stage he called is refreezing stabilizing hanged within organizational culture, norms, policies and practices in order to ensure the new behavior is sustained in individuals.The unfreezing process is extremely important when intro ducing new technology with most failures occurring at this stage due to two factors; a lack of effective communication at the beginning and a failure to involve affected individuals in the change process. Therefore Cotter (1996) identifies that successful transformational change requires all of the steps in (Figure 5) and that the total time for the change is considerable. Skipping a step never reduces a satisfactory result and ‘critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact' (Cotter, 199, p. 7). 4. Re-engineering Implementation In an organization there are various business processes which are usually fragmented into sub-processes and tasks. Re-engineering should identify these individual fragmented processes and tasks. Re-engineering should start with assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer requirements main questions to be asked are â€Å"who are the customers? What are our strategic goals and are they aligned with our m ission? â€Å". According to (Hall, et al, 1993) five keys to re-