Building a Robust Enterprise Architecture Requires Planning

CIO —

Today, organizations need to learn to make workflow changes on the fly. Otherwise, consumers and trading partners alike are ready to move on. This puts tremendous pressure on organizations to fully automate business operations wherever possible and adjust them dynamically without any disruption.

Obviously, if this were easy, everyone would be doing it. Good architectural design isn’t enough. You also need flexibility and resilience. Businesses seeking to compete on a global scale should consider the following approach:

Step 1: Architecture Framework

The first step is to establish a framework that presents a set of architectural principles that support the organization’s business goals and strategic drivers.

For example, Fifth Third Bancorp, a $105.8 billion diversified financial services company headquartered in Cincinnati, adopted these architectural principles:

A multitiered processing environment is necessary to enable the distribution of processing capabilities.

Applications should be independent of the underlying technology on which they are implemented.

Interchangeable hardware components must be used on all platforms and tiers.

Step 2: Baseline Environment

It’s important to get a baseline of the current environment—both business operations and IT systems—to define what works well and what must be improved in order to meet the future needs of the organization.

What’s striking about baseline assessment work is that it usually reveals issues that the organization already is aware of intuitively—such as a need to speed process redesign. However, what were once only hunches about the environment can now be supported by hard data.

Step 3: Target Definition

The target definition phase is designed to identify the new IT projects that must be staffed and funded down the road. Start by asking the management team (either in a workshop or an interview setting) to paint its vision for the future deployment of IT within the enterprise.

For example, the Metro Group, one of the largest trading and retail groups in the world with more than 2,300 stores across 28 countries, envisioned what it calls a “store of the future.” Making that happen called for exploiting RFID technology to track products through their entire lifecycle—from production to the shelves to the sale. RFID-tagged items would be placed on pallets and scanned upon leaving the warehouse; shipping data would be sent to the store manager for review; upon receipt at the store the pallets would be scanned again, and any discrepancies would immediately generate a report. Anything missing or damaged could be replaced through a follow-up order. RFID-equipped shopping carts would be used to monitor customer length of stay and average purchase. Item replenishment would be triggered by the system when low volume is indicated. Misplaced items would be flagged for restocking.

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