Troux Staff

By: Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

Digital business has put new demands on Enterprise Architecture professionals to make the connection between technology’s constant disruption and its impact on business goals and outcomes. According to Gartner, EA teams that do not refactor their skill sets from technology artifact generation to business outcome realization will marginalize their value and struggle to remain relevant.  

Today’s Enterprise Architect  

Today’s EA practitioners fall into two primary camps: the vanguard enterprise architect and the foundational enterprise architects. An innovation driver, the vanguard architect deals with technology disruptors and enterprise connectivity, while the foundational enterprise architect maintains enterprise technology and the systems of record.  

While currently only making up 10 percent of EA organizations, the vanguard practitioner is emerging as the leader of the pack with an ability to make and communicate business decisions that navigate digital business and technological disruptors. Gartner predicts the number of these practitioners will reach 20 percent by 2016.  

The Future’s Enterprise Architect  

As we’ve talked about in recent posts, the future of EA puts the enterprise architect in a leadership role by driving strategy based on business goals and direction. Deliverables for this emerging breed of enterprise architect include strategic guidance from the C-suite and down, roadmaps, principles, standards, and best practices.  

The diverse skill set of this version of the enterprise architect links digital business, social connectedness, and technology.  

To build out these types of teams, organizations are looking to millennials who retain these competencies due to early exposure to technology and the digital world.  

This is not to say that historical knowledge of EA practices and an understanding of modeling and IT structures is no longer valued, but skill sets need to evolve with business requirements. The new face of EA will succeed through fresh, big picture thinking combined with traditional application of models and data.  

“The “New Face of EA” in many ways requires a “New Generation” of Enterprise Architecture professionals. The primarily IT-focused professional of the past — and some would argue the present — alone will not get the profession to where it needs to go. We need EA organizations comprised of people who understand business at least as well as technology with a reporting structure outside of IT. Creating this type of professional requires educational system changes, while also fostering more interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs.”

Brian Cameron, Associate Dean of Professional Master’s Programs, Pennsylvania State University, Smeal College of Business

Today’s reality is that pretty much any capability the business dreams up will require the technology department to figure out how to deliver it. This means an understanding of how this technology will not only impact its users, but the entire business ecosystem will be a highly valued contribution… and the New Enterprise Architect is best poised to deliver that insight.

 

By: Bill Cason, CTO, Troux

Three Factors for Managing Business Critical Applications

According to Microsoft, “In today’s corporate environment, enterprise applications are complex, scalable, distributed, component-based, and mission-critical.”

Does this sound like something you should be managing with spreadsheets and guess work?

For most organizations in today’s digital business environment, big enterprise applications actually drive the business. Companies invest a lot of time, resources and money into business critical applications so it makes sense to take the appropriate steps to make sure these applications are providing your organization with the value and service intended and not opening you up to unnecessary risk.

I have walked into large global enterprises still using spreadsheets to track the life cycle of all of their technology, expecting to be able to stay on top of what’s current and still supported and what’s nearing the end of active support. Mismanaging this data can lead to security vulnerabilities, failure of critical processes, corporate compliance issues and much higher cost of support, yet large organizations continue to rely on a method that has proven time and time again to be dangerously error-prone.

It’s hard to argue that a manually updated spreadsheet stored on a shared drive somewhere is a smart way to protect an organization from unnecessary risk and costs. Especially when there are automated, efficient and accurate tools out there to eradicate the issue.

By understanding the current business context, security vulnerabilities and costs associated with each enterprise application (something not possible by spreadsheet alone), an organization can confidently manage the risks, expenses and resources required to ensure your end users are getting what they need and the business is seeing value.

It sounds like common sense, but the first step is simply understanding how your applications support the business – specifically how are they tied to your goals and strategies, your processes, your capabilities, your policies and your organizations? Are the intended users actually using the software? Is it providing a service or gathering virtual dust while you continue to pay money to support it?

Second we need to understand where our applications may have security vulnerabilities. Once a technology reaches end of life and goes out of manufacturer support, no more security patches will be produced, meaning defense from hackers and other outside intrusions is instantly non-existent.  

Last but not least, identify the costs of maintaining each application. We often find that the most expensive applications are those built on old unsupported technology.  They will have higher support costs, more trouble tickets, are more difficult and expensive to maintain, and often utilize older and more expensive legacy infrastructure.

Once we put all of this data in the enterprise context we can take the guess work out of managing our application end of life program, because we now know what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Through an integration with BDNA Technopedia, the world’s largest repository of IT software and hardware information, Troux customers use our Enterprise Portfolio Management solutions to make informed decisions around planning, managing and retiring their End-of-Life application software efficiently.

Join our upcoming webinar “Taking the Guesswork out of Managing the End-of-Life for Enterprise Applications” Wednesday, September 10, to see a live demo with Troux and BDNA and learn how to automatically gain visibility into the entire technology asset lifecycle including End-of-Life dates for application software. 

By Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

I was taken by surprise the other day when I looked at my calendar and saw that we are well into August; and before you know it summer will be over and autumn will be upon us. Immediately I started thinking about the ritual year-end strategic planning session that generally looms around now. I’m sure many of you know of what I speak.

Historically strategic planning has centered around regular sessions that evaluate business performance and goals over established periods of time. Some organizations even remain attached to the yearly planning cycle. But, with the introduction of digital business and disruptive business models, has this approach become broken, merely sending businesses into a pro-longed process of planning and budget allocating that is outdated before its executed?

I think it probably has, which means we have to start thinking about how to change our planning processes. Earlier this year we started dialogue on the very idea of how change is changing and how it affects the planning process. Our post, Beyond Technology: How Enterprise Intelligence Supports Business Strategy and Change, looked at how enterprise intelligence (EI) makes it possible for the C-suite to make necessary strategic business decisions at the drop of a hat:

The insights produced by EI tools allow Chief Strategy Officers to quickly and methodically maneuver the business as the market changes by delivering enterprise transparency that shows the cost, impact and benefits of change across the connected enterprise.

But, how does it work?

Good question. Let’s start by looking at real-time strategy. In this context ‘real-time’ means you get an immediate view of any given part of a business. The idea behind enterprise intelligence is to provide executives with a real-time, continuous strategic planning view that enables an assessment of the entire connected enterprise. Forbes talked about this recently in the article, Is Enterprise Architecture Completely Broken?:

Those EAs who truly embrace change – who work directly with business stakeholders to move their organizations to an increasingly agile state of continuous business transformation – will more likely find themselves adding real value to their enterprises. 

Using enterprise intelligence to immediately understand how a specific strategy will impact all the various parts of the business means informed decisions can be made efficiently in order to mitigate risk or capitalize on an opportunity.

Is that really possible?

At Troux, we help our clients do this everyday. As a result, the planning cycle is real-time and actionable.

The Troux mind map has become a popular tool that helps companies understand the types of outcomes they can achieve with real-time strategic planning. These outcomes generally come from finding answers to key questions, such as:

• Where are business and IT out alignment?
• Where is the business at-risk?
• What are the impacts of change?
• What are our future-state alternatives?

The mind map visually illustrates the answers to the questions that drive the desired business outcomes. These answers communicate strategy and impacts to the enterprise regardless of technical prowess or business acumen, putting stakeholders on the same page on how everything works together.

The more things change…

I do enjoy that annual opportunity to check-in with my peers and superiors for a state-of-the-union assessment, but I’m not sure it needs to be categorized as “the one” strategic planning session anymore. The world of EI allows us to understand our market position every day and make decisions and changes accordingly. Since we have the data and information at our fingers tips real-time strategy is a reality.  We can transform our annual planning sessions a daily dialogue that ensures we taking advantage of changes in the market. How long have businesses lamented that there is never enough time for strategic planning? Well, I think EI has helped us find it.

By: Dave Hood, CEO, Troux

Forbes Contributor Jason Bloomberg recently wrote a few articles addressing the current state of Enterprise Architecture. In his first post, he explored whether enterprise architecture is completely broken, a question not uncommonly heard in our industry.

We often discuss the changing world of Enterprise Architecture on the Troux blog, and it has been an ongoing debate inside Troux as to whether we should even use the term EA when defining our market. I have to admit, when I first arrived at Troux, I didn’t even know what Enterprise Architecture was. I have always viewed what we do as being about delivering business value. I think the original EA practitioners had that in mind too, but maybe they were a decade too early or just couldn’t land at the right process and tools to deliver on the vision.

In Bloomberg’s article he compares EA practitioners to Milton, the Innotech employee from the 90’s movie classic, Office Space, who continued to get paid while not actually having a role in the organization.

While EA’s role has drastically changed over the years, I like to think we are all now part of a sequel – Office Space 2: The Rise of Milton. Enterprise architecture is no longer an IT-centric discipline focused on creating complex colorful maps and models only understood by a few. To use another Office Space analogy, it is no longer about producing “pieces of flare” in hopes of proving to the business that EA is delivering some sort of value.

Does that mean EA is obsolete? Quite the contrary.

The art of making business decisions has been around since the dawn of trade. Today, every aspect of a business is part of a digitally connected enterprise, meaning the impact of every business decision ripples across the entire organization. Making critical decisions without understanding these effects can have devastating effects. The speed of industry change and the complexity represented by the portfolios that make up your business mean that informed decisions need to happen quicker than ever to remain competitive. It’s our EA friends who were shamed to the basement office that are now poised to make that happen.

Sounds overwhelming, but at Troux, we teach our customers that there is no need to boil the ocean. Understanding your connected enterprise can happen with bite size undertakings, along a logical timeline. By identifying critical business capabilities and harnessing the right data to gain perspective we can land at an ideal course of action for moving the business forward.

While Bloomberg’s article starts out questioning whether there is a future for EA, he actually arrives at the similar conclusion to us and expands on that vision in his follow up article “Agile Enterprise Architecture Finally Crosses the Chasm.”

The sequel is here, and from what we have experienced with our own customers, it is going to be a big hit at the box office. Milton was able to quickly determine that the “people to cake ratio” was too big. With today’s data, knowledge and tools, we can quickly learn so much more. Here are just a few examples of companies using the Troux’s version of enterprise architecture to make timely, informed business decisions.

Cisco: Global networking solutions giant, Cisco, has successfully implemented Troux’s Enterprise Portfolio Management solution to help define a common desired operating model across its business units. This in-turn helps them identify and divest businesses that are unlikely to deliver the desired top-or-bottom-line results.  In addition, Troux is also used to compare potential acquisition targets to the target model to help quickly identify the true value of potential acquisitions.

U.S. Census Bureau: In 2012, the U.S Census Bureau set out to build optimal IT solutions to handle a myriad of challenges to the business. With an Enterprise Architecture (EA) discipline enabled by Troux, the Bureau now has a more integrated business overall, underpinned by an IT decision process, collaborative governance, and a common knowledge base. It all adds up to increased agility, efficiency and innovation

Bayer: Bayer started working with Troux in 2008, and the two companies have had much success together. To date, Bayer has used Troux to manage and optimize its landscape across information, technology, applications and business architecture portfolios.

Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

In our last blog post, The Next Chapter of Enterprise Architecture: Self-Service, we examined the change in mind-set that seems to be occurring in all corners of the enterprise when it comes to EA. We wrote about EA tools as a catalyst to empower stakeholders all across the enterprise with quality decision-making information available whenever needed:

“With digital and technological disruptors firmly rooted in our world there is a massive mind shift at play in how we interact with technology as well as how we expect to get things done.”

In this post we will further explore why the timing now seems right for EA to go through this renaissance.

To start, EA has evolved. It is no longer an IT-centric discipline focused on creating a set of artifacts in the form of complex maps and models only understood by a few with limited ‘actionability’ in terms of driving measurable business outcomes. To serve the evolving needs of decision-makers EA has evolved as well. With the rise of digital business and the rapid pace of change in the market it is more important than ever for decision-makers to not only know exactly where to invest in their business, but to also better understand the impacts of those investment decisions.

“While many biz & IT execs are aware of disruptive innovations in IT (such as the nexus of forces and digital business), they often struggle to identify the impact and implications of these innovations to their business model.” – Gartner

With the most comprehensive understanding of how every piece of an organization is connected, enterprise architects are poised to take the lead in how the enterprise responds to disruptive forces and change, whatever their origin.

When we talk about disruptive forces we mean consumer expectations, digital business, new technologies, regulatory demands, social media and more. EA in a leadership role helps organizations navigates these disruptors while staying focused on its strategic goals and vision.

In this new era enterprise architects still have to maintain their knowledge of IT, but they have to move beyond those contributions and activities, introducing themselves as strategic advisors who communicate EA’s value to all parts of the business. Today, enterprise architects are also looked to for strategic budget decisions. They must be able to vet how a new investment will support corporate outcomes and transform the business. Further, they must assimilate the integration costs and process to assure the company realizes the value.

This renaissance of EA has only just begun, but some big wins are already in the marketplace. Read how Troux customer HSBC is undertaking a massive program to simplify operations through EA. Find the complete article on Computer Weekly, HSBC makes executives responsible for application consolidation.

By: Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has changed exponentially over the years with transforming from an IT-driven initiative to a business strategy necessity.  EA as a field formally took shape in 1987 with the publication of John Zachman’s article “A Framework For Information Systems Architecture”. The paper described both the need for and the challenges of managing increasingly scattered systems:

“The cost involved and the success of the business depending increasingly on its information systems require a disciplined approach to the management of those systems.”

In today’s world we are seeing dramatic changes in how reaching this information system nirvana plays out. Why? Because we live in a world where digital access and apps are available for everything and anything. With digital and technological disruptors firmly rooted in our world there is a massive mind shift at play in how we interact with technology as well as how we expect to get things done.

Naturally, that has significant impact on EA, an IT-rooted discipline that both drives and manages change across the technology landscape.

Consumers are now accustomed to doing things themselves, and those expectations carry over into the business environment. Thanks to our “there’s-an-app-for-that” world, the IT department isn’t the only one who interacts with technology. We live in a world where everyone wants to be hands-on to leverage IT solutions and information.

What does this mean for EA?

These shifts open up a world of opportunity, or better yet a major necessity, for a function that can connect the enterprise dots to achieve a greater business outcome. EA is in the best position to step into that role. Critical business decisions require seeing the big picture in any situation. The big picture is gained through insights that answer the businesses most important questions. Successful EA should empower and inform stakeholders to answer these questions and make sound decisions using combined enterprise knowledge.

Today’s Version of EA: Beyond the IT Function

In December 2013 Gartner published Predicts 2014: Enterprise Architect Role Headed for Dramatic Change, highlighting the future version of EA which crosses business functions and often lives outside of IT altogether.

• Over 78% of EA practitioners are focused on leveraging EA to integrate business and IT, as well as to grow and transform their businesses.

• Today, 55% of organizations are supporting EA with either the collaboration or participation of business leaders.

At Troux, we call this new era of EA enterprise intelligence. Enterprise intelligence gives the C-suite and their decision-making counterparts a heightened level of transparency by establishing a line-of-site that spans the enterprise as a whole without weighing down IT resources to make it happen.

The Way Forward

If you are reading this thinking, we are so behind the curve, go easy on yourself. The new era is in the early stages. Gartner estimates that market penetration of business architecture is at 20 percent. There is a lot of ground to be covered. Just be sure your business and IT worlds are interacting and integrating – that is what the people want, after all.  

Make Strategic Business and IT Decisions: Download the Troux Answers Guide to gauge your ability to make strategic business and IT decisions. The guide takes you through questions like:

• Where do we have disconnects between IT and the business?
• What are our current IT costs for supporting the business?
• What is the consolidated view of our application landscape?
• What are our enterprise interdependencies?
• How should the future landscape need to look to support our business?

Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

We recently wrote about Enterprise Intelligence (EI) as a concept that delivers executives and decision makers with the insights they need to make more informed business and technology strategy decisions because of its enterprise transparency and visibility. In light of the recent wave of cyber security breaches it’s a good time to point out that EI insights also help with decisions related to everyday operations. In this case, strengthening cyber security

The bad guys are winning  

Cyber security experts tell us that virtual crimes have hit a tipping point. In 2013 cyber-crimes affected more than 200 million users worldwide and in the US alone more than 480 corporate data breaches occurred involving 95+ million records (The 9 Biggest Privacy And Security Breaches That Rocked 2013 / thinkprogress.org).

The attackers don’t discriminate. Government systems, social networks, and a leading retailer were all compromised leaving the public uneasy about the data they share online. 

The truth shall set you free

It’s a hard truth, but the reality is that the proactive use of EI can single-handedly evade even the worst of attacks. You see, with the complete enterprise transparency EI provides there are no questions about security and exposure risk within the IT walls of a business.

For context let’s revisit the very public 2013 Department of Energy (DOE) data breach that left more than 100,000 names compromised. In this case, not knowing the lifecycle of an application cost the DOE upwards of $3.7 million in lost productivity and credit monitoring.

At the time the DOE was using Adobe’s Cold Fusion, which had become unsupported, so Adobe wasn’t sending patches to fix security holes, resulting in the security lapse.

With EI companies have a complete view of the application lifecycle so they can take appropriate measures to retire or find way to obtain extended support applications.

At Troux we work with data-cloud company, BDNA to provide clean, rich data so that companies know how their applications, technologies, processes and people relate to one another and the overall business. The BDNA Technopedia catalog contains more than 38 million researched data points for over 960,000 hardware and software products. The data is updated every day with new products and market information such as software support levels, Windows compatibility, end-of-life dates, hardware power consumption, and much more. Technopedia also tracks vendor mergers and acquisitions, informing users of market changes so enterprises are never left guessing if their data is accurate.

Evolution means evolving problems. Nowadays we have to worry about cyber bugs and attacks. With that comes new ways to fend off the perpetrators. How about using EI to fend off these online security attacks?

Recently Troux hosted a webinar on cyber security, touching on ways to proactively mitigate threats. To learn how to develop a cyber security plan for your connected enterprise, click here.

By: Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

It’s been a month since Troux hosted more than 200 customers at our worldwide conference in Austin to talk about ways to make enterprise architecture (EA) a must-have business capability. Now that everyone has digested their Texas BBQ and cleared out their inboxes, we’d like to reflect back on what attendees experienced at this year’s Troux Worldwide Conference.

What’s all the fuss about?

We started the Worldwide Conference four years ago to bring together customers, partners, and professionals involved in Enterprise Architecture (EA) for networking and joint learning with a focus on delivering rapid results with Troux Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM) solutions. That event has become an annual function that drives EA discussions and a lot of knowledge sharing.

The theme for the 2014 conference was Making EA Stick and featured presentations from over a dozen Troux clients and partners. We were thrilled to welcome Amway, ANZ Bank, Apptio, Atos, BDNA, Dell, Fidelity Investments, HSBC, JetBlue, MetLife, Molina Healthcare, Saudi Airlines and VMware to share key learnings and outcomes achieved on their EA journey. In addition, the Troux team presented keynotes, demos and best practice sessions that walked attendees through how to use EA to drive strategic decision-making and business success.

Rather than tell you what we thought of the experience, we gathered some key conference takeaways from attendees:

Cary Brown, Molina Healthcare said:

• Think in terms of business value: To align EA to business outcomes it is important that you think in terms of the problems you are solving for each area as if you worked there and demonstrate EA’s value every step of the way, making them equally as successful in helping the company achieve their goals.
• Change your own processes where it matters most: Just because you’ve done something a certain way doesn’t mean you need to always do it that way. Your business changes and EA needs to change along with it.
• Answer Important Questions: Once you know the chief challenges in your key business areas you can clearly identify the questions that need answering the most, then drive EA towards answering those questions.

Amway’s Dave Reinhard summed up his takeaways as:

• Sharing experiences on EPM with companies navigating new and mature programs makes it a lot easier to put headlights on our own program and avoid potential problems.
• Understanding comes with communication. Problems come without it.
• There always seems to be just one more facet that I hadn’t thought of before.

In his blog, Intact Technology, 2014 Worldwide Conference, Corey Balko wrote:

Great architects should become great communicators. The common theme heard throughout the conference was how to communicate value back to the organization. There was no shortage of valuable data, but we need to understand that it is not about the data. The way we usually communicate is hurting us. We struggle with communicating the value of EA.

Read Corey’s entire blog post for a list of pitfalls to avoid and for tips on how to turn your data into a story that people want to hear.

Keep the EA learnings going! Join us for Troux Directions EMEA 2014

Join us in London on October 1st for the 2014 Troux Directions EMEA Conference. This event is designed for business and IT executives who are actively involved in defining business strategy for their company. Troux Directions lets you enjoy peer networking and learning with a focus on delivering rapid business results with Troux EPM solutions.

By: Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

Our last post introduced the concept of enterprise intelligence (EI), the CIOs answer to business intelligence (BI). EI is a relatively new concept in the world of strategic technology planning and the more we explore it, the more opportunity we see for its applicability beyond technology and into other parts of the C-suite.

This post takes a look at how change affects strategic business planning, and the role EI plays in mitigating risks in a climate driven by constant and rapid change.

Paul Boag said it best: “The problem is that the very nature of change is changing.”

Today chief strategy officers (CSO) and similar functions struggle with gaining the insight needed to make strategic decisions, because those decisions must happen quickly and the information needed to evaluate risk factors is often difficult to obtain or takes too long to aggregate. Strategic planners are often tasked with identifying and evaluating market expansion opportunities, M&As, divestments and the like, but it’s not as easy as pouring time into due diligence anymore. Nowadays, immediate attention and nearly quick decisions are required if a business wants to capitalize on fast moving market trends. The challenge for the CSO is to make decisions at the speed of the market while mitigating business risk. Doing that successfully means planning is no longer an annual exercise – it is now a continuous function and the corporate transparency EI delivers makes it possible.

A world of constant change demands enterprise intelligence

Whether it’s contemplating how to leverage game-changing disruptive technologies like social media, mobile, analytics, and cloud to develop a new business model or charting a new market expansion strategy, EI gives CSOs much needed line-of-sight across the enterprise.  From this vantage point CSOs can understand how everything works together and impacts each other – from Goals and Strategy to Business Capabilities to Applications and Technology. This means that opportunities and risks can be evaluated in the context of the entire enterprise and decision-makers become equipped with the insights they need to make business investment decisions faster and with greater confidence. As a result, EI becomes an integral part of the strategic planning process  

Changing with Change

Until now, CSOs have struggled to gain the enterprise-wide insights needed to set strategies and make key decisions at the market’s rapid pace. EI changes all that because it arms them with the decision-making information they need to have a meaningful dialogue about the business at a moments notice. The insights produced by EI tools allow CSOs to quickly and methodically maneuver the business as the market changes by delivering enterprise transparency that shows the cost, impact and benefits of change across the connected enterprise.

It’s true, change is changing. And, so are business models, technology and the competition. Doesn’t it make sense to adopt a strategic planning approach that delivers insight into the best way to anticipate and address these changes?

We think so.

Learn more about continual planning in Forrester’s white paper, Connecting The Dots: Building An Integrated Strategy And Execution Plan.

Key Takeaways include:

• Market conditions can change so rapidly that strategic direction may change by the time a final decision is made.
• A company’s mission may not vary frequently, but market changes force business models to change with greater frequency.
• Strategic planning has become a continual exercise that, when closely integrated with adaptable delivery strategies, enables companies to anticipate opportunities and, based on the right balance of innovation and operational effort, deploy minimum viable products, which allows them to mitigate risks that accompany large, drawn out project cycles.

   

  
  
  
  
  

   

Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

A poll at a recent Wall Street Journal CIO Network conference found that 40 percent of attendees rank business intelligence (BI) and analytics as a top priority. Findings suggest that CIOs credit BI tools with providing the insight necessary to make critical business decisions because they provide a view into high volumes of data. For us data geeks findings like these mean the value of data intelligence is finally reaching the mainstream. You see, BI is a revelation on the business side. It lets companies sift through big data to glean insights into market dynamics and consumer behavior – two key drivers of product development and go-to-market strategy. But, IT strategy has different data needs that BI tools only partially fulfill.

CIOs require a different type of data intelligence tool that helps them make decisions about where to invest their resources – both human and capital. Unfortunately, a BI tool wasn’t purpose-built for that job. But, the right tools for the job do exist and at Troux we call those enterprise intelligence tools.

You wouldn’t put gas in a car that runs on diesel, right?

Just because two things seem alike doesn’t mean they serve the same purpose. And, the same holds true for using BI tools to capture enterprise intelligence (EI).

CIOs and IT executives need their own set of fit-for-purpose tools to glean critical insight into the enterprise to really know where to invest.

Decision-making and strategic planning is typically challenging within the enterprise environment.  There are lots of departments and functions that work in silos and it is difficult to get a sense of the big picture. In today’s business environment it is important to recognize that strategic decisions can no longer made in silos or on a single view of the enterprise. Decisions must be made with an understanding of the “connected” enterprise. That’s the beauty of EI.  Enterprise Intelligence gives CIOs and their decision-making counterparts a new level of transparency by establishing a line-of-sight that spans the entire enterprise.

EI enables executives to take the constructs of market analysis and BI and apply it to Business & Technology Strategy Planning. This is possible because EI is multi-dimensional and shows information in the context of the business, so you see the depth to your decision-making by understanding how Goals and Strategy, Business Capabilities, Investments, Applications, Technology, and Information etc. fit together and relate.  Ultimately decision makers see the big picture instead of a single area of the business, which helps them understand the impact of every decision they make. EI gives business leaders the necessary context and insight to understand the cost and benefits of change against the entire business, not just at a group or departmental level.  With this newfound clarity, decision makers have the ability to better understand and prioritize where they invest in the business and establish a plan to execute change that considers the business as a whole.

EI in Action: CHEP Case Study

WHO: CHEP, the leading provider of pallet, container and crate pooling services for many of the world’s largest supply chains.

THE CHALLENGE: Connect information stored across operations in more than 50 countries, covering more than 500,000 customer touchpoints.

CHEP needed a vendor to guide them through the process in order to access both big-picture views and the essential details needed to support business decision-making.

THE SOLUTION: Leveraging Troux’s enterprise intelligence tools helped CHEP understand and optimize its applications portfolio and technology architecture on a grand scale. A BI solution would have only allowed them to look at one area – either the application portfolio or technology architecture, without any insight into how the two relate to other parts of their business, such as business strategy and capabilities.

THE RESULTS: “Now we’re looking at strategic planning three to five years in advance, centering around our capabilities and our business goals,” said Christopher Esser, CHEP Senior Enterprise Architect. “We know what we have, and we are getting an idea of what we are missing. Now we need to look at where we’re going. Troux helps us do that.”

The CHEP example illustrates that CIOs, CEOs, CFOs, COOs need a more robust IT solution for their data intelligence. BI is the right tool for many things, but for strategic IT decisions that drive enterprise cohesion and IT success, only enterprise intelligence will do.

To learn more about how you benefit from EI, download the complete CHEP EPM case study. (http://resources.troux.com/chep)

 

By: Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

Current events paint a picture of a finance sector plagued with “Technical Debt” resulting in security breaches, ATM lockouts, blocked debit and credit cards, and more. It often feels like as consumers we have little choice but to accept these faulty systems. But, the more I read about these challenges, the more the enterprise architecture (EA) side of my brain takes over. From an EA perspective, the break down started a long time ago when executives chose a wait-and-see approach to problem solving that consisted of applying system patch – after system patch versus wholesale upgrades or rebuilds. Looking back makes it clear that the sector can no longer be idle. Let’s start from the beginning.

Where were you for the moon landing?

Our current banking systems date back to the 60s and 70s when transactions posted over night. But, today’s systems demand real-time automation for things like ATM and mobile banking. The kicker is that as the products and services evolved the core systems did not. Things like mobile banking channels require mobile technology and consumer mobile technology didn’t exist during the days of Neil Armstrong. So, instead of a complete re-do the legacy systems were built on, over, and side-by-side.

Back to the future

Now troubles are creeping in as a result of the MacGyver-style remedies. The UK seems particularly afflicted, most notably with two very public RBS failings in 2012 and 2013. The RBS missteps prompted a formal investigation where the appointed regulatory body found significant deficiencies at eight major UK banks stemming from the various legacy system band-aids.

The UK findings have lead to more stringent regulations that carry hefty fines when standards aren’t met. Tighter regulations coupled with the uphill battle of trying to maintain outdated technology have put the sector in a tough predicament.

Now what?

For most CFOs and CIOs it can be dizzying to think about it. Maintaining the status quo in these conditions is hard enough; imagine trying to repair it at the same time. That’s the beauty of enterprise architecture. It’s more than identifying what needs to be changed; it allows business leaders to understand the impact of the change in the context of the connected enterprise. When done right, EA provides a complete look at the systems that have amassed. It’s an exploration of how legacy systems connect to key business processes, the technology they rely on, the applications that make them work, and the information that flows through them. This visibility and line-of-sight gained gives a clear picture of both the costs and the benefits of change so that business leaders can develop an effective plan to upgrade and transform their legacy systems to modern ones.

Companies like American Express, Swedbank, and Discover Financial Services have seen tremendous benefits from EA initiatives. In fact, the Discover Enterprise Architecture Repository project received InfoWorld’s 2010 Enterprise Architecture Award. The project realized over $4.7 million in IT savings and / or cost avoidance. Read the full case study here.

Yes, it takes time and a lot of hard work. But, like Neil Armstrong taught us at the same time these systems were put in place, one small step can also equate to a giant leap.

 

By: Ben Geller, VP Marketing, Troux

A traditional approach to Enterprise Architecture might suggest spending a significant amount of time (in some cases this could last as long as a year) gathering data from different parts of the business in the hope of building a holistic view of how the business looks today. Once you are sitting on this mass of data you may then consider EA tools to help you make sense of it all. To some people this seems a logical sequence– we’ll do the heavy data lifting on our end then call in the analytics guys to tell us what it all means. In reality this approach will often lead to wasted effort and set back the timetable for delivering value. As we discussed in a recent post, Bigger Doesn’t Always Mean Better when it comes to data. With the right EA tool in place, organizations better understand the data that is actually needed to yield business benefits, dramatically increasing success rates and significantly reducing time to value.  

Why the data first approach is flawed

This approach typically involves time wasted on gathering data that is not necessary or will not deliver significant value. Once the data has been collected organizations often invest additional time and effort verifying data quality, but that can become a daunting task as well if the amount of data is too great and the quality of the necessary data is compromised. In addition data needs to be governed otherwise it goes stale rapidly. If organizations are working with more data than they need, they end up spending even more time and effort governing data that isn’t useful. 

Successful data maintenance is federated, involving busy people who need to understand why they should spend time on this vital task.  Modern EA solutions come with governance tools and processes built-in, and knowledgeable tools vendors typically bundle in best practice guidance to help get data in good shape.  The do-it-yourself approach, without adequate guidance and tool support is very often the long, slow, hard and potentially unsuccessful route.

For these reasons start with the end in mind, find a tool that helps guide you to the desired outcome, and let it define what data is necessary.

Architect a better business in a different way

Start by identifying the key questions that need to be answered to help the organization better operate, compete, and grow. You will be pleasantly surprised – it’s not as many as you might think. Organizations have discovered that as few as 150 questions may be enough to understand the enterprise sufficiently in order to figure out how to change it.  Mature EA vendors will have incorporated the most common questions into their tools, questions such as: What new business capabilities need to be created? Is the business investing in the right places? Do our strategies support our goals? The tool will provide decision-making insights in the form of visualizations.  Also, don’t underestimate the power of the visualization to drive the data quality process: a CIO of a major European Telco told us “I’m interested in your tool because it will point my guys in the direction of what data to collect, and I believe lighting up your reports will drive the data quality process quicker than any other method”.  Spot on, sir!

Everyone is looking for a better way to achieve their business objectives. But in this instance doing the heavy lifting that comes along with collecting massive amounts of data may not be worth the effort. In fact, it’s better to start small. Get the most out of your EA initiative by focusing on what matters most to business. This will determine what questions need to be answered.  The right tool can guide you through what data is needed and deliver results – quickly.

Download the Troux Mind Map to see how Troux solutions help businesses better understand what data is really needed and enable decision-makers to see results – quickly.