Role of Modern Enterprise Architecture Tools in Digital Transformation

Ian Stendera, VP of product, Ardoq, thinks that business leaders may be pursuing investments that fail to serve their business models’ unique needs in the race to digital transformation. However, with enterprise architecture, leaders are equipped to better identify true areas for improvement and devise solutions that drive measurable results.

Following the disruption caused by the coronavirus outbreak, organizations everywhere are reconsidering the best way to optimize their operations to continue driving business results, despite the unfamiliar circumstances. In many cases, this reevaluation has led to organizations accelerating their digital transformation efforts. However, in their haste to transform, are companies pursuing those efforts as strategically as they could be?

Oftentimes, companies fail to identify which specific areas of businesses need to be updated in order to enact actual results, and consequently make changes that not only don’t yield the expected ROI, but that may even work against overarching business goals. 

To avoid common pitfalls of digital transformation, business leaders can deploy enterprise architecture (EA) tools to ensure their initiatives result in meaningful change. With the purpose of evolving business ecosystems from where they currently stand to where executives want them to be, EA inherently aligns with digital transformation efforts. 

In order for investments in these tools to be worthwhile, organizations need to choose technology-forward programs rooted in robust organizational data. With these qualifications, here’s how next-generation EA tools—and the enterprise architects wielding them—will enable successful digital transformation.

Learn More: 6 Ways to Minimize Rejection During Digital Transformation

Achieving a Holistic Organizational View

At its core, EA is the process of evaluating an organization’s business and IT capabilities in order to identify how they can then be improved to achieve defined business goals. Therefore, to be successful in this pursuit, organizations must factor in everything that makes up their business, from people, processes, and products to data and apps. 

Because a business is comprised of many deeply interrelated roles and accompanying technical workflows, having a detailed overview of the technologies each employee is using is essential for ensuring business leaders don’t choose to modify an area of business that, in actuality, isn’t one that will yield the greatest ROIOpens a new window —or worse, one that will create issues elsewhere. 

With accurate insights into how certain tools are being used across the organization, leaders will better understand how evolving their digital investments can ripple out to impact those beyond it. Though this isn’t to say that enterprise architects must secure a complete picture of a company before they can enact any changes; rather, the goal is to have enough information on the current state of an organization and its dependents so that the results of their proposed changes can be anticipated with a degree of confidence. 

To achieve the necessary level of insights, leaders need to consider the work of individuals at all levels of the organization, as this will produce the most informed depiction of the company. Next-generation EA tools make this data collection easier by granting staff-wide access and usage, crowdsourcing information from employees whose unique workflows may not have been considered in previous business modeling efforts. 

Of course, having a tech-based system—instead of pen-and-paper blueprints—will be essential in granting this access, as employees located anywhere will be able to input their respective data in real-time (versus static documents that inhibit collaboration).

Learn More: Moving Beyond Linear Customer Journeys in 2021

Promoting Agility While Managing Risk

Backed with a detailed, data-based model of an organization and how its many pieces are connected, enterprise architects can build predictive scenarios of how specific digital transformation initiatives will contribute to—or detract from—reaching targeted business outcomes. 

With modern tools, architects can access the data collected across the organization to map the course of business scenarios so that they can analyze the impact of changes at scale before any adjustments are actually put into place. These roadmaps can be devised with different business outcomes in mind, such as growth or cost optimization so that leaders can identify which business strategies will be most productive for reaching those specific goals. 

Since business needs and objectives change over time—and rather rapidly, as evidenced by the events of this past year—organizations need EA tools that enable agility without sacrificing organizational integrity. With the ability to adjust environmental variables in real-time, architects can help business leaders assess the impact of responses before any action is taken. As the models account for all areas of business, leaders will be able to proactively identify any potential risks that may occur from initiatives, which may prompt them to then change course to avoid wasted resources. 

Digital transformation has become a buzzword known to professionals in nearly every industry, but making digital investments for the sake of it isn’t always in a company’s best interest. With next-generation EA tools, organizations can better identify which areas of business truly need improving and assess the strongest solutions for improving them, thereby driving enduring change with measurable results. 

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