Enterprise Architecture constantly leads to a competitive advantage

Paul van der Merwe, consulting manager at Real IRM recently took the time to talk about the Harvard Business study and the benefits of strong enterprise architecture. Enterprise architecture can lead to much more than a competitive advantage when it comes to your business. Along with the competitive advantage, EA can bring profits, market leadership and a sustainable business model.

The Harvard Business report showed that these were the effects of having a strong business structure:

* More competitive, especially in terms of entering new markets and launching new products and services.

* More profitable, both through increasing revenues and slashing costs.

* More easily able to embrace change, including regulatory change.

* Able to remove duplicate and redundant processes, including the IT systems which support these processes.

* Able to cut IT costs (by up to 25%), identify payback on IT and more easily merge the goals of business and IT.

* Able to manage their data more easily, with less manual rekeying of data, and reduced data error and redundancy.