Enterprise architecture as a tool to embrace change due to technological development
S. Andhella
Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: The recent technological development creates a new challenge for the management team within an organization, as its survival depends on its ability to adapt to the development.
Hence, the new approach called enterprise architecture can be used as a tool to meet the challenge. Enterprise architecture aims to create synchronization among operational, information, and communication technology within an organization. This paper aims to illustrate the importance of enterprise architecture as a tool for assisting such change especially for businesses in Indonesia. Moreover, the organization capability to adapt to the change also depends on its personnel.1 INTRODUCTION
As organizations encounter an increasingly complex, dynamic, and threatening environment, attention must be focused on both handling day-to-day affairs and adapting toward the changing of environmental conditions (Thibodeaux & Favilla 1996). According to Murray & Greenes (2006), the vast changing environmental condition faced by the organizations is mainly due to the technological development. Therefore, organizations should link their strategy, knowledge, and performance in order to gain its competitive advantage and finding the right strategy to deal with technological development (Berman & Marshall 2014). First, this paper will discuss the concept of strategic management, using the new approach of strategic formulation according to Berman & Dalzell-Payne (2018) that could be implemented by organization in order to deal with the recent technological change. This paper believes that enterprise architecture can be used as a tool to deal with the technological changes that are happening in Indonesia.
2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 Strategic formulation - technology
As cited by Smith et al.
in Thibodeaux & Favilla (1996), the term strategic management itself is a guidance of a selection of decision and action processes with the core purpose to help organizations increase their performance by the improvement of effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility. Moreover, the transformative breakthrough of digital computing and other emerging technologies has globally reshaped the industries. Digital technologies are considered as a tactical advantage as well as the key to transformational strategic opportunities. Technology provides a different economic value propositions, as it can reinvent customer experiences as well as employee capabilities without increasing any cost (Leavy 2005). Therefore, in order to stay ahead, executives need to embrace technology, even though it creates an exceptional challenge for corporate strategists (Carneiro 2005). The new approaches of strategic formulations are:- Including experienced technologists in the strategic team.
- Applying innovation as the core.
- Implementing an agile strategy.
- Doing decision-making 2.0. (Berman & Dalzell-
Payne 2018)
The organization’s ability to keep with the technological changes can be achieved through innovation as it captures the imagination power of the individuals (Leavy 2005). One of the factors that would contribute toward a successful change is to have the right mindset and it should not be constrained by passing success or being limited by the company resources. From the perspective of innovation networks, knowledge and technology are considered to be the central object that shapes the relationship; it creates know-how as well as extending the relationship among the actors itself. Furthermore, as innovative networks appeal to be more rational and collaborative, a flexible and adaptive form of organization appears to be a more suitable agent for innovation.
2.2 Enterprise architecture
Enterprise architecture aims to create synchronization among operational, information, and communications technology layers of an organization.
It also accommodates the management of organizational change, supporting the foundations of information technology and communications, replacing uncertain systems, planning, promotion or expansion of information and communication systems, as well as creating a common organizational language (Jahani et al. 2010). Enterprise architecture should not only be considered as a project that can be done once, it must be constantly managed within the organization instead. It should also be updated according to the organization’s need and aligned with the changes that occur within it. It should be considered as a permanent program that must be adjusted to the organizational process and foundations (Jahani et al. 2010). However, aligning IT investment to business strategy is not enough. Organizations need to be sure that their enterprise architecture is flexible and constantly optimizing their IT delivery efficiency as it also needs to be synchronized with their strategic planning processes (Varghese & Kurien 2004).3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The above literature review demonstrated that organizations should be able to learn, innovate, and transform in order to overcome the challenges. More importantly, the new approaches in strategic formulation are: including experienced technologist in the strategic team, applying innovation as the core, implementing an agile strategy, and lastly doing the decision-making 2.0. Those strategies can be accomplished through enterprise architecture.
Since enterprise architecture assists employees in managing their knowledge, skills, and expertise, it creates an innovative network that provides a bigger chance for innovation values to take place. As previously mentioned, enterprise architecture can accommodate change as it can also influence the design decision and investment behaviour. Having an effective communication system that would link the strategic formulation with technological tools is highly advantageous.
Most importantly, the architecture provides decentralization of the hierarchical structure through local communication channel. This would be highly beneficial especially for organization that employs and understands the significance of its millennial employee. Millennial in general is a technological savvy generation. Therefore, utilizing their insight would be valuable for an organization. Decentralization through local communication channel means that ideas can be distributed in a faster and more efficient way (i.e., replacing memo with email), and since it also gives less personalization feeling into it, it gives employees more confidence in expressing their thought or ideas.4 CONCLUSION
Despite the significant relationship between IT unit and business unit, some of the personnel within the organization failed to understand its importance. In addition, organization deals with a condition of insufficient skills and expertise from the people in the organization that could result in misinterpretation and mismanagement during the implementation. The lack of knowledge could also have resulted in incorrect technological investment and the inability to effectively use the given technology (Carneiro 2005, Iyamu & Mphahlele 2014). It is crucial for the personnel within the organization to believe that they are capable of performing and sometimes overcoming the implication of the change that occurs. Therefore, future research would be conducted within businesses in Indonesia, especially in the field of human resources management. This paper will contribute toward a better understanding of Indonesian workers on their understanding of technological changes that occur and the effectiveness of enterprise architecture as a tool during such changes. In order to achieve such findings, questionnaires would be distributed toward 150 respondents from a different working environment.
REFERENCES
Berman, S. & Dalzell-Payne, P. 2018. The interaction of strategy and technology in an era of business reinvention.
Strategy and Leadership 46(1): 10-15.Berman, S. & Marshall, A. 2014. Reinventing the rules of engagement: Three strategies for winning the information technology race. Strategy and Leadership 42(4): 22-32.
Carneiro, A. 2005. How technologies support winning strategies and productivity. Handbook of Business Strategy 6(1): 257-263.
Iyamu, T. & Mphahlele, L. 2014. The impact of organisational structure on enterprise architecture deployment. Journal of Systems and Information Technology 16(1): 2-19.
Jahani, B., Reza Seyyed Javadein, S. & Abedi Jafari, H. 2010. Measurement of enterprise architecture readiness within organizations. Business Strategy Series 11(3): 177-191.
Leavy, B. 2005. Value pioneering - How to discover your own “blue ocean”: Interview with W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Strategy and Leadership 33(6): 1320.
Murray, A.J. & Greenes, K.A. 2006. In search of the enterprise of the future. VINE 36(3): 231-237.
Thibodeaux, M.S. & Favilla, E. 1996. Organizational effectiveness and commitment through strategic management. Industrial Management and Data Systems 96 (5): 21-25.
Varghese, J. & Kurien, P. 2004. IT imperatives beyond strategic alignment: enterprise architecture flexibility and IT delivery efficiency. Handbook of Business Strategy 5(1): 275-280.