Enterprise architecture involves the broad decisions to be made by an organization in the process of creating an organizational information support system. The process of implementing enterprise architecture has now become an inevitable part of present-day business. The inputs of enterprise architecture can dynamically change the business environment in many ways, because basically, it is a blueprint that integrates process and goals in a business enterprise. Thus, it provides vital inputs to components of the business process like intellectual capital, organizational learning, strategic planning, organizational design, competitive advantage, business process reengineering, and systems delivery. In old days money wielded the power in an industry, as it was necessary to erect giant structures and owning money was the primary requisite to venture into business. With the growth of banking institutions in the 30s, the concept of owning money changed as banks, came to help the businessperson. Venture capital also changed the scenario drastically. Thus came a new breed of professional who managed the businesses, taking the powers from the share holders. But today the entire scenario has changed. The enterprises of the information age thrive on the knowledge of the worker, or the intellectual capital. The intellectual capital is useless if it cannot be exploited. Enterprise architecture inputs can help in effectively exploiting the intellectual capital. Learning has become an inevitable part of new businesses, because of their greater complexity. Enterprise architecture can help to record the knowledge inputs generated in all the vital points that control the enterprise, such as the visions, goals, strategies, governance principles and models; business terms, organization structures; processes and data; application systems and technical infrastructure. The information age has not only contributed to change in the business environment, but also to the nature of the change. The business strategy has changed from a plan to an adaptive design that makes a quick response to the controlling factors of the enterprise. Enterprise architecture incorporates the guidelines and methods for a adaptive design. Organizational design is the other factor that makes use of the knowledge-building and analyzing mechanisms of the enterprise architecture. Adaptive enterprise design, which prescribes a firm-specific governance mechanism, has become important for present-day business enterprises. Enterprise architecture can help with necessary knowledge inputs. It can also help in building modern concepts like manage-by-wire that builds mechanisms for sensing and responding to changes in the market many times faster than the competition. Mass customization and product differentiation have become the key words for the successful modern day enterprise. In such enterprises where the information content of the product is high, enterprise architecture can assist in bringing down the cost involved in product differentiation. The greatest input enterprise architecture can provide is in business process reengineering, which itself is a radical rethinking of the business to achieve better levels of performance. Similarly, the components in systems delivery, such as systems architecture, technical architecture, data and information architecture, can be very well-integrated through enterprise architecture. |
