CONSTRUCCIÓN DEL CENTRO DE CONTROL, MANTENIMIENTO Y REPARACIÓN DE EQUIPOS Y

EA contributes to value in four different ways. Consequently, we obtain four perspectives that either facilitate cost reduction or value generation (Schekkerman 2005). This concept is illustrated in Figure 3-7. Business effectiveness means to improve current business process (As- is) by designing business processes (To-be) to successfully implement and execute corporate strategy to gain competitive advantage. It marks the execution of enterprise transformation by employing EA for increased benefits. Consequently, IT assets are more effectively integrated, reconfigured, gained, and released. Business innovation enables the creation of new services and products to achieve new ways of business value generation by adequately managing IT assets. Technology efficiency is concerned with keeping current costs low, for example the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) which is a method of cost analysis to identify all direct and indirect costs of a product or system (David et al. 2002). Thereby, technology is used in such a way that it supports business efficiently by adapting adequate ways to organize and manage an organization’s information and technology architecture and therefore relevant IT assets. Technology enabling facilitates means for technology to add value to the organization, for example by improving the quality and the efficiency of processes. Current and future

technology thereby enables improved execution of business processes especially in terms of cost. This constitutes the adequate treatment of IT assets.

Figure 3-7: High level EA value model (cf. (Schekkerman 2005))

The question that arises now is what the actual contributions of EA constitute and how they fit in the overall performance of the organization. Based on the ITBV model presented in Section 3.4, we can extend and focus on the EABV model (cf. Figure 3-8) which is based on the ITBV model by (Schryen 2012) (cf. Figure 3-4). The main differences here are the inclusion of strategy and derived goals and conceptualizing EABV as direct outcome or impact respectively of EA performance yielding benefits. We argue, that for achieving business value in any form, we must have a goal (or more) even if it is just an implied one. Speaking of performance, we need to be able to measure goals with the appropriate metrics in order to learn about the actual performance. Goals determine management and investment decisions that integrate, reconfigure, gain, and release assets through EA services and processes that impact firm performance. Goals are a prerequisite to investments. Firm performance is impacted by those investments as well as context/environmental factors and lag effects.

Figure 3-8: Conceptual EABV model (based on (Schryen 2012))

In our view, EABV can be characterized by several attributes. The outcome is the result of an EA service or process. This outcome can happen on different levels. As already mentioned, we are interested in project outcomes. Consequently, the result of projects with EA contribution constitutes our research focus. Receiver is the stakeholder that actually benefits from EABV which can be a particular EA practitioner or a part of the IT organization. This connection is useful for tracking benefits and for future reference during decision making. The same is true for source where we keep track of stakeholders achieving the benefit. Enablers are stakeholders, capabilities, or events that enable the creation of EABV, while inhibitors impede it. A simple example of a stakeholder enabler is a manager investing in particular IT assets. Other enablers are organizational alignment, information availability, resource portfolio optimization, and resource complementarity (Tamm and Seddon 2011; Tamm et al. 2011). An example for an inhibitor is a projected cut in EA budget. Benefits are measurable improvements based on the impact of outcomes. In other words, the impact of an outcome can yield particular benefits and can be seen as the effect caused by the results of EA contributions. Benefits impact firm performance directly and are of major concern for communicating EABV. Notably, we also use the notion of disbenefit, which allows for negative result reporting since not every project is successful. Example direct benefits are lower costs, increased revenue, competitive advantage, improved decisions, etc. (Tamm and Seddon 2011). We will examine EA benefits in more detail after we give a definition of EABV in accordance with the model in Figure 3-8:

“Enterprise Architecture Business Value is the impact of the contribution from EA services and processes to firm performance aligned to strategic goals that benefit the health of organizations, the satisfaction of stakeholders, and the capabilities of the enterprise by integrating, reconfiguring, gaining, and releasing assets or resources respectively in order to ensure adequate leveraging of these benefits to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.” EA quality is seen as a prerequisite for enabling organizational benefits (Tamm and Seddon 2011). Thereby, EA quality constitutes various characteristics such as flexibility, effectiveness, and efficiency that enable a high level of excellence employing EA. But not only organizational benefits can be achieved through EA. For example, (Ross and Weill 2005) distinguish between business-related and technology-related benefits. For our purposes, EA benefits can be categorized as follows (Shang and Seddon 2002): (1) Operational benefits involve day-to-day activities such as projects and process that are usually repeated periodically that mostly acquire, consume, and reconfigure IT assets. Early success stories were reported by streamlining and automating various simple and repetitive operations. (2) Managerial benefits are activities that deal with allocation and control of IT assets. (3) Strategic benefits are achieving sustained competitive advantage through building effective architectures that enable innovative action strategies. (4) IT infrastructure benefits allow for standardized and reusable IT assets that constitute the basis for business applications. (5) Organizational benefits can be achieved in terms of focus, cohesion, adoption, learning, and execution of set out strategies.

We summarize relevant EA benefits using the enterprise system benefit framework proposed by (Shang and Seddon 2002) in Table 3-8. This framework was developed by analysing numerous cases published by major ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software vendors. In other words, when talking about ERP we are talking about integrating, reconfiguring, gaining, and releasing of IT assets (cf. Sec. 3.6) resulting in various benefits. We want to emphasize that methods on how to achieve these benefits are limited and not very detailed in literature which is why we address this research gap with our approach (cf. Sec. 2.7). In addition, yielded benefits are dependent on the approaches adopted for evaluation, selection, and project management for in the ERP context, and therefore impacting EA benefits (Al-mashari 2003).

EA Benefit Example References

Operational

 Cost reduction

 Cycle time reduction  Productivity improvement

 (Kamogawa and Okada 2005;

Lyzenski 2008; Ross and Weill 2005)

 Quality improvement

 Customer service improvement

 (Kamogawa and Okada 2005;

Lyzenski 2008; Ross and Weill 2005)

 (Doucet et al. 2008)

 (Kamogawa and Okada 2005)

Managerial

 Better resource management

 Improved decision making and planning

 Improved risk management

 Reduced complexity

 (Lyzenski 2008)

 (Ross and Weill 2005)  (Ross and Weill 2005)  (Boh and Yellin 2007)

Strategic

 Support business alliance  Building business innovation  Faster time-to-market

 Achieving competitive advantage  Increase strategic agility

 Improve business-IT alignment

 (Ross and Weill 2005)

 (Kamogawa and Okada 2005)

 (Lyzenski 2008)

 (Ross and Weill 2005)  (Doucet et al. 2008;

Hoogervorst 2004; Kamogawa and Okada 2005; Weill 2002)  (Doucet et al. 2008; Pereira and

Sousa 2005; Plazaola et al. 2008; Whittle 2004)

IT Infrastructure

 Building business flexibility

 Reducing TCO

 Increase IT infrastructure capability

 Increase system integration

 (Ross and Weill 2005)

 (Lyzenski 2008; Ross and Weill 2005)

 (Gustafsson et al. 2009; Lyzenski 2008)

 (Anaya and Ortiz 2005; Boh and Yellin 2007; Hoogervorst 2004; Ross and Weill 2005)

Organizational

 Improve collaborations  Improve stakeholder skills

 Empowerment

 Improve organizational change

 Building common understanding

 Increased stakeholder satisfaction

 (Choi et al. 2006)  (Op ’t Land et al. 2009)  (Lyzenski 2008; Ross et al.

2006; Winter and Schelp 2008)

 (Hoogervorst 2004)

 (Armour et al. 1999; Rood 1994)

 (Kamogawa and Okada 2005;

Ross and Weill 2005)

3.8. Chapter Summary

We presented the main theories and concepts that underpin our work in this Chapter. Our work is a contingent approach which means that it does not claim to be the only means of conducting EABV assessments as the organizational environment and its influencing factors are unique and therefore various approaches could lead to success in meeting the business needs of clarifying, understanding, and assessing EABV. An important aspect of our work is that our application domain EA lacks a concrete underlying theory for the purpose of examination which is why we presented it through the lens of dynamic capabilities. This theory explains the integration, reconfiguration, gaining, and releasing of resources or assets respectively. We argued that this is what EA is about in the context of enterprise transformation in alignment to strategic objectives. In order to understand EABV, we need to be aware what assets are contributing to performance.