Will IT be able to keep pace with your business initiatives? Do you have roadmaps to keep them aligned?

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'Not using an EA can result in organizational operations and supporting technology infrastructures and systems that are duplicative, poorly integrated, unnecessarily costly to maintain and interface, and unable to respond quickly to shifting environmental factors', US Government Accountability Office.

So to keep pace implies having an architecture that is both efficient and effective. Effective, so that when business units require:

  • opinions on what the business should do to rejuvenate itself
  • plans (roadmaps)
  • advice on the IT side of a merger & acquisition
  • software/product recommendations
  • investment decision on an existing application
  • support the budgeting process on the application portfolios
  • ...

IT is ready with an answer. This means that the EA group has maintained the proper EA artifacts, about 15, (TOGAF has more than 50 diagrams/matrices). If too much time is spent in maintaining all these artifacts then there is no time left to answer to these business units and consequently EA value is questioned.

Now, given that many artifacts must still be maintained, it has to be done efficiently using proper EA tools and methodology.

 

Enterprise Architecture Consulting

We have decades of experience in Enterprise Architecture using various EA frameworks and accelerators. We like to tie the Business Strategy with the proper Architecture.

Well architected and business-aligned applications cost less, have a higher level of satisfaction from the business community, are easier to maintain and can be delivered faster than poorly architected applications. Consequently, we have developed our expertise in EA and offer consulting services covering:

  • Definition of various roadmaps in line with the business strategy
  • Vision and Strategy Planning
  • Standardization of your business processes and their automation with a BPM suite (and use of artificial intelligence) using Operating Models concepts
  • Usage of an enterprise data model
  • Definition of enterprise-wide service model based on enterprise data model
  • Establishment of an integration framework
  • Active management of application portfolios (EPPM/APM)
  • Capture and maintenance of these EA artifacts in appropriate tools
  • Guidance of solution architects and agile development squads
  • Assessments & Recommendations
  • Governance
  • High-Level Architecture for Business Processes, Data, Applications, Services, Integration and Technology
  • Product/Software Evaluations and Recommendations
  • Project QA (Requirements and Architecture phases)
  • Corporate Architecture Group assessment

In addition, to the above, we offer the following services:

Over the years we have used multiple architecture frameworks & methodologies (ITA&S-F, IAF, TOGAF, Frameworx, FEA, Information Engineering, UML, P+, SOMA, Scrum) and tools (Casewise, AllFusion/Erwin, PowerDesigner, Rational, Visual Paradigm, Coolgen/IEF) in both the Operational/Business Systems world and in the Business Intelligence (BI) world. And we have developed a good understanding of the following industries:

  • Transportation (Airlines and Railways)
  • Banking & Investment
  • Telecommunications
  • Software
  • Media & Advertising
  • Government
  • Insurance
  • Manufacturing

We are also involved in RFI/RFP to select software, hardware or resources / SAAS (cloud) and have very often created the negotiation items (when not negotiating directly on behalf of our customers).  In the context of RFP we have done the followings:

  • Identification of the requirements
  • Creation of the accompanying documents to describe the RFP process, rules, calendar
  • Identification of the targeted suppliers
  • Definition of the evaluation criteria and weigths
  • Responses evaluation
  • Proof of Concepts and/or product demonstrations
  • Pricing strategies to identify best model for our customer with Opex/Capex simulations and for a 3 years viewpoint
  • Negotiations
  • Contract verification (from a coverage and/or limitations of capabilities, exit strategy, price protection viewpoint, not from a legal viewpoint)

We also got involved in contracts optimization covering:

  • Renewals (with understanding of capacity planning)
  • Aligning various smaller contracts through a new enterprise-wide single contract
  • Growth or reduction of needs

Finally, we believe that organizations have to be both effective and efficient in their EA practice and consequenlty we have developed the ITA&S-F Framework (and accelerator in Casewise) and the following EA course: Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture to Deliver Business Value to help.