As a consequence of increasingly complex and sophisticated business activities, it has become necessary, over time, to implement business architecture methodologies, in order to facilitate greater efficiency in carrying out internal processes within organizations. This has become so in response to an increasingly aggressive and competitive market, strict regulatory requirements, mergers and acquisitions activity and switching to e-business and globalization.
Business architecture links business strategy with actual implementation of business processes carried out by the organization’s IT systems. This is done by coordinating and integrating an ensemble of business aspects, among them are a business process model, an information model which supports business processes, a description of the places in which processes are executed, who is executing them, and which applications and technologies are being used in the process.
By using business architecture tools, is it possible to construct and manage business models and visually see the relevant processes and the way they are being linked to the organizational structure and to systems within the organization. By mapping the processes, and the systems and entities which are linked to these processes, it is possible to continuously figure out, analyze and improve complex operational processes, IT infrastructures and IT arrays. This involves the maintenance of a multi-dimensional matrix which incorporates a large number of parameters, which maximizes business efficiency and provides the relevant information as and when necessary.
These architectural tools enable, for instance, associating any relevant regulatory requirements, risk and controls to processes to organizational entities and to any systems linked with these. In this way, implementing business methodologies within the organization becomes effective also for the purpose of reducing the overall level of risk within the organization. Additionally, it is possible to apply various simulations to components which have been mapped, in order to examine the effects of possible implementation of desired changes.
