What is Enterprise Intelligence?

Enterprise Intelligence is a key structure for supporting successful transformation efforts

In my post “Enterprise Architecture and the Road to Enterprise Intelligence,” I talk about an approach to enterprise architecture that results in Enterprise Intelligence. Wikipedia’s definition of Enterprise Architecture as “the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating, and improving the key requirements, principles, and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution,” is probably close enough for most. I’m sure that every Enterprise Architect would tweak this sentence or refer me to the TOGAF, DODAF, etc. definition that is more meaningful to them. For this conversation it is good enough because it hits what I believe are the keys to understanding EA, which is that it is about managing change in the service of meeting the vision and strategy of the business.

This is important because these are the same keys that make it so relevant to organizational transformation. The trend in the world is towards more change, happening faster. Business models are becoming more complex and high performing organizations have to be able to manage change in order to be successful. The period between the instantiation of business vision and the implementation has to shrink. I have honed in on the term organizational transformation because the “transformation” part is a key element. When business vision changes in order to be successful, high performing organizations must be able to change down to the last layer of the organization in order to be efficient and effective. This means changing everything from business process, to application, to performance measurement. Not only must the change permeate every aspect of the business, but it must also be understood that during, and most importantly after, the change that the entire stakeholder community will be affected as well. Enterprise architecture should obviously play a key role in developing this capability.

To me, enterprise intelligence is the decision support structure that underlies both Enterprise Architecture and Organizational Transformation. It is the explicit understanding and management of the key decisions needed to support the business throughout the execution of organizational transformation and its enterprise architecture. Many will argue that understanding the stakeholder community is already embedded in EA methodologies and they would be correct. I’m simply stating that understanding the stakeholder landscape, the decisions associated with this landscape, and the explicit value of these decisions is so important that it deserves specific focus. I’ve talked in some detail about this in “Specifications for Decisions Support” and “The Value Landscape.” Essentially, I believe that enterprise intelligence should provide a framework for understanding the key decisions that impact the organization and provide a framework for understanding the value that these decisions provide. For Enterprise Architecture and Organizational Transformation this should provide the organization with an explicit understanding of the value of undertaking these types of initiatives, while at the same time providing a series of reports, dashboards, and other analytic components and processes that specify exactly how these add value to the organization. Is enterprise intelligence a discrete concrete that should live separately from enterprise architecture? There will be plenty of opinion on that subject and EAs being the types of folks they are, will make sure I’ll hear quite a bit about it. For me the distinction isn’t for the EAs, it is to help business stakeholders understand the tangible values of the pursuit of enterprise architecture and to tie together the pursuit of enterprise architecture and a capability around organizational transformation.

Sincerely,
Joshua Millsapps

@jmillsapps