Would you build a house without a plan or blue print? Would you invest capital and not expect a return? Hopefully, your answer to both of these questions is NO. I believe most businesses strive for success with the best of intentions. Yet, we often see organisations that over time lose the ability to realise that success due to buying and implementing enterprise application software and I.T. infrastructure without an overarching plan that determines what the investment is to deliver.
This results in the management team becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of quality information, reporting and inefficiency. In these ad-hoc environments people tend to develop their own systems (typically in Access or Excel) as the core business systems don’t do what they want them to or they can’t get the information they need. This leads to the organisation being in a constant state of flux, losing the ability to be responsive and agile.
This is where an Enterprise Architecture can help the organisation realise success. There are some 30+ frameworks and methodologies on the market – you only have to do a search on Wikipedia to get the list. In my opinion, few if any of these frameworks address real business needs and deliver true alignment. But that is a topic for another day. To overcome the issues that we see we have developed the Realising Success ™ process and methodology – so businesses can achieve success through the alignment of systems, process, people and information. Getting the right information to the right people at the right time can lead to improved business insight and decision making, which ultimately means improved performance.
