Delivering Business Value Through Enterprise Architecture

Download the Output Report from this Corporate IT Forum workshop. The report has been produced from input from 18 enterprise architects with 152 years' shared experience and discussions focus on the benefits of EA; looking at value from different perspectives and how an effective EA team can save organisations time and money. Fifteen organisations participated, representing industries from finance, global engineering, government, healthcare, recruitment, retail, transport and utilities.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) should be seen as an overall strategic approach to business - adding value to many areas through a standardised approach that has widespread buy-in within an organisation. Within the enterprise, value has different perspectives and changes all of the time, therefore defining the value of EA and assigning performance indicators to it can be a difficult task. Whereas most agree that hard metrics are difficult to obtain to demonstrate value, EA should be seen as an opportunity to close the gap between IT and the rest of the business that can lead to misalignment and frustrations.

Many organisations practising EA are using it to drive the IT strategy and link into the overall business strategy. EA is also useful as an enabler to get IT involved earlier with business planning and projects, which can bring immediate benefits to both parties.