Enterprise architecture for small businesses

Enterprise Architecture for Small Businesses?

A short article to share on using EA for small businesses. EA mostly takes place in larger size enterprises. These enterprises are often already aware of the main enterprise architecture benefits: -

Manage technology complexity;

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Manage technology as an asset;

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Improved planning results in improved delivery;

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Cross organization alignments and visibility;

These benefits are not really ‘applicable’ to smaller benefits.

Background information small businesses Did you now that: 

More than 95% of companies are small businesses

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Small businesses account for 50% of gross domestic product (GDP).

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Less than 10% of small business owners can imagine growing from small to medium.

How can EA help small businesses?

The opportunity for EA contribution to the small businesses is for those that are wanting to grow their business. EA will help address the gap between the different current and future states per area of business strategy. It will also enhances the business growth

model to provide the better understanding of the various operating growth model options and the usage of the information and technology within those.

Enterprise Architecture Software How does this drive any requirements back to enterprise architecture tools? Most of the EA requirements to support small business are covered by support for general enterprise architecture activities such as developing technology strategies and roadmaps. However there are two additional requirements that we can highlight. The first one is around scalability of the license model. Small businesses will only have 1 (part time) enterprise architecture so the EA tool needs to support a small business or single user license model that is still cost effective. Secondly the small business will create constraints on training for the product. Sending people to training is likely not financial viable and on-site training is not financially of interest to the training provider. So this means the EA tool needs to have a real easy-to-use user interface and require no training (maybe some online tutorials to get started).

This was just to shed some light on what value EA can provide to small businesses.

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Disclaimer: this article reflects my opinion and that of WhiteCloud Software Ltd., creator of EAComposer.com, a cloud enterprise architecture software solution.