Enterprise Architecture

We enhance mission execution across business units by rationalizing both the business and the IT enterprise architecture, covering strategy, processes, people, information, and tools. We connect IT and business priorities to focus on business enablement and business outcomes

Enterprise architecture is a planning discipline, not an art. It demands a significant investment to bring results to fruition but has the power to deliver enterprise transformation like no other discipline.

Enterprise architecture can develop meticulously detailed models. The models can characterize the relationship between all the moving parts of the enterprise. For IT enterprise architecture, models describe connections from line of business activities to data and information systems.

Experienced practitioners work closely with business owners to carefully prioritize the portions of new enterprise architecture to build in “slivers” that will attain maximum immediate value within resource limitations.

Enterprise architecture is the discipline of choice for building an enterprise portfolio of capital investments aligned with overall strategy and supportive of important initiatives for multiple workstreams across the enterprise.

How We Help Clients

Guide Enterprise Architecture Across Workstreams

Using insights from an architecture strategy and IT assessment, we help develop enterprise architecture across multiple workstreams in the organization. The work can include creating new architecture blueprints and roadmaps. In addition, alignment of IT and business priorities and rationalization of architecture are beneficial for mergers and acquisitions and valuable for companies with multiple divisions.

Architecture Strategy and IT Assessment

We conduct a careful evaluation of our client’s enterprise architecture business and technology capabilities and maturity. We examine the strength of the connection between business and IT strategy, processes, vision, and priorities. We benchmark the current state of alignment between business and IT, and we document salient insights about operations and management of systems and technologies.

Plan IT Enterprise Architecture

We work with our client’s enterprise architecture team members, executive leadership, line staff, and business owners. We develop an enterprise architecture strategy and roadmap to support enterprise transformation. The planning sets priorities for architecture development, builds a target architecture blueprint, and creates an implementation roadmap. The plan ensures the alignment of IT, target architecture, and business initiatives. The roadmap should focus on business enablement and outcomes and show milestones connecting IT priorities with business priorities. We emphasize the use of strategic planning with the engagement of top executives in critical decisions. We encourage the adoption of a strategic business enablement perspective to guide all IT priorities.

Lead Implementation of Enterprise Architecture

We lead the implementation projects from the roadmap with an enterprise architecture roadmap and blueprint of future architecture in hand.

We help implementation, renewal, and upgrade of cores systems, data architecture. We help guide streamlining and simplification of tools, technology, platforms, and management processes. Finally, we help with migration from a culture dependent on classic server-based screens and reports toward a culture that leverages cloud services and serverless operations, APIs, DevOps, user self-service, integrated data and analytics, and agile methodologies.

Solutions For All Aspects of Your Business

What We Do

Product Traceability

Gathering data feeds to track products from piece parts to serialized ready-to-ship finished goods, including supplier, facility, process, and operator information. Building pipeline tracking to visualize product delivery through a partner channel to a distributor and finally to an end customer.

Capture Customer Feedback and Manage Incidents

Gathering customer feedback, CSAT, net promoter, and incident data from web pages, shopping carts, and mobile apps. Combining captured data in an intuitive and actionable presentation.

Improve Operational Business Processes

Bringing process, warehouse, and shop floor data to a tabular and graphical representation with a visual perspective that extends across the enterprise.

Data Collection and Reporting for Compliance

Combining data from multiple systems to provide tracking and process assurance for compliance reporting and enforcement.

Intelligent Lead Distribution to Partners

Connecting a machine learning-based assignment tool to sales, marketing, and partner management systems to deliver each lead to the channel partner most likely to close the deal.

Channel Management

Developing a global channel partner management system with real-time data collection, scorecards, and dashboards for up to a million channel partners, with customized views for use by staff and by partners.

Integrate Data Sources for Executive Reporting

Integrating data from multiple data sources, applying transformative business rules, and presenting unified business performance reports for executives.

Deliver Data Access and Reporting During ERP and CRM Migrations

Overcoming data availability and latency problems arising from an ERP or CRM migration with consolidated data feeds, data transformation, and reporting.

Transform Data to Forecast Next Most Likely Purchase

Developing customer maturity models and combining the models with customer, product, and sales data from multiple systems to produce an accurate and dynamic next most likely purchase forecast. Includes updating sales quotas and generating lead assignments from the forecast of next most likely purchases.

Consolidated Reporting for Mergers and Acquisition

Accelerating access to consolidated reporting that spans the merged enterprise immediately following a merger or acquisition. Consolidating data from systems in each entity and building dashboards and reports with data transformations that provide a comprehensive view across the combined organizations.

Quality Focused, Result Driven

Our Approach

We use an ordinary time-tested approach with discipline and experience to achieve extraordinary business outcomes

The magic in our approach is our reliance on time-tested frameworks and methods, our discipline, and our IT solutions experience that, all together, help us deliver good results. At each step, we engage with executive sponsors, business owners, and IT and EA staff. We seek to ensure that our progress is visible and enable our sponsors and client staff to participate and contribute to the business outcomes we seek.

Select a Framework

We choose and adapt a basic enterprise architecture framework as a foundation for our assessment. Our principals have Zachman and TOGAF frameworks as models. We can also work with a custom framework established for our client. Wisely, we never advocate building out more than a sliver of an overall framework at one time, enabling us to focus on the components of the framework that are most relevant to the needs of the business.

Perform Assessment

The assessment is an essential part of our approach because it identifies the needs of the enterprise for aligning business initiatives and IT priorities. The assessment should find issues that, when resolved, can become business-enabling opportunities.

Strategic Prioritization

We work with line of business owners and C-suite executives to prioritize business transformation and business enablement issues. Priorities should reflect initiatives that might offer significant business value, that solve a serious business problem, and that are technically feasible.

Develop a Plan and Roadmap

This step builds a coherent architecture plan and sequences initiatives as milestones on a roadmap to best match the strategic prioritization. The plan, or blueprint, reflects business enablement priorities and embeds the essential sequencing of technologies needed to support the milestones. The blueprint details the target architecture of the future. Depending on business requirements, the blueprint will only cover the parts of the organization and IT that are essential to the current needs.

Establish EA Governance

We help implement a simple process for enterprise architecture governance. The process can include easy-to-use methods for adopting and sequencing new technology, rationalizing existing technology, or revising the blueprint of the target architecture and the implementation roadmap. Business priorities can change, so the roadmap must be easy to adjust. If the enterprise has an existing EA governance approach in place, we can adopt that approach.

Implement Prioritized Milestones from the Roadmap

We work with the client to implement the selected milestones called out on the roadmap. These may touch only a sliver of the organization and IT infrastructure. We only implement a limited amount of new architecture to address the issues and opportunities defined in the roadmap.

Monitor and Evaluate Results

We assess the effectiveness of the new architecture that we built. We then fine-tune our planning process, the blueprint, and the remaining roadmap. We want to understand whether we have resolved issues of concern, reduced costs, and provided transformative business enablement.