What is a Business Architect?

A Business Architect develops models and roadmaps to improve an organization. They focus improvements on the stakeholder's objectives - enterprise agility, new markets, productivity, digital transformation, improved efficiency.The business architect's business architecture models include operating models, capability models, value chains, are information models.

A business's transformation is led by a Business Architect, who also oversees the creation and implementation of crucial deliverables including value streams, business capability models, and business capabilities. An organization's operational demands are understood and developed by the Business Architect, who also creates an efficient IT architecture for business process management. The Business Architect assists in reorganizing and restructuring the company’s IT enablement process and develops business capability maps and value streams to connect strategy with execution. Key outputs include strategy summaries, operating and business model analyses, business entities, organization mapping, systems mapping, system footprint analysis, etc. are required for the Business Architect responsibilities.

Synergizing with other disciplines to accomplish company goals is a crucial component of the duties of a Business Architect. Business Architects work to integrate Business Architecture with other organizational components such as strategy creation, business analysis, process management, operations, and system analysis. They collaborate with other experts to improve various elements of the overall Business Architecture.

To put it simply, a Business Architect assists organizational leaders in identifying the causes of their organization's problems and the best course of action for addressing them. An organization's improvement is delivered through a Business Architect.

What Is Business Architecture?

Based on the aims of each department and the overarching corporate goals, Business Architecture is created. Planning, organizing, and putting into action an organization's business objectives requires a strong understanding of Business Architecture and strategic planning. It aids in the efficient operation of various organizational units both inside and outside the company.

Business Architecture is a type of planning based on the strategic vision of the organization that transitions from a narrative approach including tens of thousands of pages of text to a more visual approach that is simple to absorb and comprehend. It directs the firm's varied capabilities toward strategic goals and aids in creating synergy between them. A Business Architectural framework, as it is known, lays out a clear foundation of a company's structure, staff, and operations.

Business Architecture may do things that hundreds of pages of information about a company's performance cannot due to its visual and graphic effect. Business Architecture may both project a company's future ideal state and describe its current baseline condition. A target state represents a compromise between the ideal condition and the company's objectives.

Business Architecture is the process of defining how a set of independent, non-redundant artifacts can represent an organization's desired state and as-is state, as well as how they relate to one another. It also involves creating a list of capabilities that are prioritized and aligned with the company’s overall goals, presenting this understanding to its key stakeholders, and moving the company from its current existence to its desired future state. Business Architecture aids in outlining a clear framework for a company's organizational, technological, and commercial operations. Thus, Business Architecture gives a pictorial representation of how a company operates and aids in planning and developing for business optimization. It offers a thorough overview of an organization's policies, beliefs, services, and solutions as well as its standards and directives. It encourages and harmonizes IT projects across the company.

How do you Describe Business Architecture?

Like all enterprise architecture, Business Architecture is described in models.

• Business Model - How value is collected is described in the business model. For only one item or service, the business model canvas is effective. It struggles as a modeling approach with intricate business models. In actuality, the ability to spot areas where the business model is getting murky is one of the benefits of the business model canvas. Incorporating the enterprise's strategic views into strategy creation and business planning processes is made possible by the physical process of constructing a business model artifact. In this case, the architect and the models they develop are the link between strategy and architecture. This serves to increase the Enterprise Architecture's strategic alignment, the architecture's overall quality, and the architect's skills and value to the company. Phase B of the TOGAF ADM is when you would develop Business Models as a component of Business Architecture. The business model is particularly effective in showing the leadership team to how a fresh approaches addresses their operational problems. Business Architecture is more effective at coordinating the rest of the firm on what has to be done, both operationally and organizationally.
• Operating Model - Many individuals conflate what an operating model is with how they utilize it. An operating model explains how a company organizes its main operations. The operational model displays the distinctive skills that are in line with the business's strategy, as well as any talented leadership teams or distinctive investment profiles. An enterprise's anchor is the operating model. For the plan to be effective and last longer, it is essential. At Conexiam, we frequently employ a Kaplan Strategy Map to pinpoint the adjustments or concentrations needed in an operational model.
• Value Chain - A value chain diagram shows an organization's value-creation processes at a high level. Traditional Porter value chain diagrams distinguish between supporting and principal activities. Sequences that depict the hand-off of activity in a value chain are the main activity. Because every supporting action represents a load on the primary activity, we always place the supporting activity at the top of a Porter diagram. The primary activity must provide sufficient customer value to cover the costs of the ancillary operations. A value chain diagram shows an organization's interactions with the outside world at a high level. This graphic aims to quickly enroll and align stakeholders for a particular change endeavor so that all participants are aware of the high-level functional and organizational context of the architectural engagement. Providing a streamlined business process diagram and outlining the value components and modifications necessary for each operation is a typical strategy.
• Capability Model - To concentrate attention, capability models are utilized. A strong process model is thorough. A good functional model is thorough and cognizant of organizational structure. A portion of the activities and organization constitutes a strong capacity model. The actions that need to be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve the intended result should be the subset's main emphasis. The planning, engineering, and delivery of the enterprise's strategic business capabilities are the main topics of capability-based planning. It is directed and led by the business and combines all the firm's operations to reach the necessary capacity. Capacity-based planning may fit the majority, if not all, corporate business models, which is especially helpful in organizations where a latent ability to adapt is necessary and we employ the same resources for diverse capacities. The need for these abilities is commonly identified and refined using business scenarios.
• Information Model - The business information model, according to TOGAF Framework, does not represent a database design but rather the semantics of an organization's data. It lists the things that are significant to a company and that it is likely to collect data on (as entities), as well as connections between pairs of those significant things (as relationships). It is simpler to comprehend than a logical data model since it avoids several system-level components. It includes not just digital information but all corporate information. Most of the time, each company has a single Business Information Model that defines all pertinent data across the board. To represent all or a portion of the information model graphically, we may use one or more diagrams.

To summarize: The models of Business Architecture include the business model, the operating model, the value chain, the capacity model, and the information model. Changes or Target Architecture are described in Views. Views require good analysis by the Business Architect. A View describes the Architecture in terms of a Concern. A Concern is something like the effect on Customer Intimacy or Agility. Analyzing the target in these terms ensures we are not looking at a simple list of costs/benefits usually financial. While important decisions are made for more than short-term financial reasons.

What are the components of a Business Architecture?

We mentioned a few components in the previous section, but the following includes the entirety of Business Architecture components or models:

• Operating Model - The Operating Model outlines how a company organizes its primary operations.
• Business Model - Value capture is explained by the business model, which is used to guide decisions.
• Value Chain - The value chain diagram shows the actions that a business engages in to create value at a high level.
• Capacity Model - The Capacity Model is employed to concentrate attention.
• Information Model - The Information Model, not database architecture, represents the semantics of an organization's data.
• Process Model - The Process Model aims to illustrate how many linked business operations are grouped together under particular business functions.
• Organizational Model - The Organizational Model is concerned with bringing the entire business into alignment.
• Functional Model - A functional model is any organization-aware, complete Business Architecture model.
• Domain/Risk Architecture Model - The risk or domain architecture aims to control uncertainty and foresee possible issues throughout the process of digital transformation.