Governments in this era are facing demands for enhanced and better-quality citizen service delivery, making IT modernisation and digital transformation critical. In a world where agility and innovation are highly valued, enterprise architecture is a key element in this transformation.
What is enterprise architecture?
Enterprise architecture is the process by which organisations standardise and organise IT infrastructure to aligns with business goals. These strategies support digital transformation, IT growth and the modernisation of IT as a department.
Essentially, enterprise architecture help organisations structure IT projects and policies to achieve desired business results, as well as stay on top of industry trends disruptions using architecture principles and practices.
The importance of enterprise architecture
While traditionally enterprise architecture strategies were limited to the IT portion of an organisation, these days this is not the case. Modern enterprise architecture strategies now extend to the entire organisation, rather than being limited to just IT. This helps ensure the organisation as a whole is aligned with digital transformation strategies and technological growth.
Enterprise architecture is especially useful for large departments going through digital transformation as it focuses on bringing legacy processes and applications together to form a more seamless environment.
Enterprise architecture helps various departments in an organisation understand the broader business model and better navigate risks and challenges. Because of this, enterprise architecture has an important role in unifying and coordinating departmental processes across an organisation.
The goals of enterprise architecture
Enterprise architecture is not its own entity; it is guided by the organisation’s strategy and business requirements. Enterprise architecture helps map out how information, business and technology can work together seamlessly to meet organisational goals. The enterprise architecture framework can successfully combine people, data and technology to show a comprehensive view of the inter-relationships within an organisation.
The ultimate goal of any enterprise architecture planning strategy is to improve the efficiency, timeliness and reliability of business information – a goal mirroring most organisational goals. It is no surprise then, that enterprise architecture has become such a priority for organisations. Without enterprise architecture, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with new technologies such as the cloud, IoT, machine learning and other emerging trends that will prompt digital transformation.
Benefits of enterprise architecture
A good enterprise architecture planning strategy considers the latest innovations in business processes, organisational structure, information systems and technologies.
One of the most obvious benefits of enterprise architecture is in IT. It can be used in system development and IT management to eliminate errors, system failures and security breaches. It can also help organisations navigate complex IT structures or to make IT more accessible to other departments.
The benefits extend beyond IT, however. Enterprise architecture can also offer support for re-designs and re-organisation, especially during major organisational changes, mergers or restructures. Enterprise architecture is also useful for bringing more discipline into the organisation by standardising and consolidating processes for more consistency.
