We look ahead to 2026: The manufacturing company has had two difficult years: Markets and customers changed rapidly, acquisitions and sales brought a lot of disruption, and IT lagged behind. But the difficult years were used for complete digitization. In development, marketing, sales and service, the teams now work seamlessly together and adapt flexibly to market changes. The introduction of an enterprise architecture (EA) played a decisive role in this, as it was the only way to seamlessly connect business and IT. This helped to adapt the corporate strategy and thus made a decisive contribution to digitalization. In this special, we’ll use best practices, trends, and real-world examples to show you how to prepare your business with EA to increase agility, reduce costs, and improve business and IT integration by 2026.

What does enterprise architecture do?

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a strategic approach to analyzing and designing a company’s structure and processes. It combines business strategy, information technology and organizational procedures and creates transparency about processes and information flows. The benefits of EA lie in improved decision-making, faster adaptation to market changes and cost reduction through optimized use of resources. EA promotes innovation and strengthens the competitiveness and long-term strategic orientation of a company. An “EA roadmap” helps to better plan and implement future developments. Similar to a map, it provides “navigation instructions” for the targeted design of company processes and concretely implementable recommendations for action.

Anchoring architectural competence in the organization

Innovative companies distribute architectural expertise across the entire organization, creating a strong network for short- and long-term measures. Traditionally, enterprise architects have often evolved from technical solution architects. In view of the increasing complexity of IT landscapes and their interlocking with business processes, enterprise architects today also have to take on strategic and department-specific tasks. The role of the “Chief Architect” is of particular importance. He acts as the “primus inter pares” within the architectural team and plans the architecture of the entire company or a large area. The first companies have recognized the potential and are positioning the Chief Architect in parallel with the CIO or in the strategy department. Special training formats such as “Chief Architects Labs” or architecture bootcamps increase productivity and quality.

Challenges in measuring success

EA activities should always be made measurable. Examples of metrics (KPIs) include: realized cost savings potential, number of projects without architects, reuse of architecture assets, number of cross-departmental applications, number and skill of IT architects, and EA maturity compared to the industry benchmark. The EA maturity level varies greatly in German-speaking countries. While digitalization-focused companies (e.g. car manufacturers, energy suppliers and logistics companies) rely heavily on EA, EA is still underrepresented in digitally less developed industries such as the public sector and retail. Companies and institutions in all industries can benefit from EA if they use it as a strategic tool that goes far beyond IT support.

Balancing agility and long-term planning

While long-term IT planning used to be standard, today project projects are implemented much more iteratively and agilely. This development presents architects with the challenge of keeping an eye on the “big picture” and at the same time having to deliver results at short notice. This is precisely one of the main strengths of an EA, which allows the interaction between agile teams and the higher-level EA management to be controlled via suitable governance and accompanied with suitable EA tools.

Exploiting the potential benefits of EA with modern tools

Modern EA tools, together with business capabilities provide comprehensive transparency about the IT landscape, identify design potentials and help to better integrate the entire IT into business processes via (AI-generated) roadmaps. This allows risk assessments of extensive projects – such as major SAP transformations or M&A activities – to be made more precisely.  EA thus offers an end-to-end view of all relevant components (IT and business) and creates a transparency that is often obscured by firmly anchored silos in the company. This creates room for manoeuvre that can otherwise only be achieved through elaborate reorganisation measures. For example, cloud activities, which often take place in an uncoordinated manner, can be implemented much more effectively using such tools.

Recommendations for a successful implementation of EA

From numerous projects for the introduction and further development of Enterprise Architecture (EA), some essential recommendations for action have emerged:

1. EA is a “top priority” and part of the corporate strategy:The classic approach of anchoring EA in IT is outdated. EA should be designed from the perspective of the CxO or the business unit and be anchored in the respective business unit strategies or close to the board. This is the only way to plan and implement a digitization strategy holistically. Only then is the interaction with IT determined.
   Tip: Define key stakeholders and involve this group regularly in order to reflect on short- and long-term goals together. Integrate EA goals into annual business unit strategic planning.
2. Implement EA quickly, leanly and iteratively:Proceed iteratively: Define what you want to achieve with EA, by when and with what effort. Determine the status quo (maturity level across processes, organization, business, capabilities) and create a compact EA framework that covers all actions as a leitmotif.
   Tip: Use agile architecture methods and plan your activities in monthly sprints.
3. Understand EA as a “spider in the web”:EA translates between business and IT. Use it to break down silos and optimize value chains in terms of processes, capabilities and IT assets. It is crucial to find the right degree of freedom between central specifications and decentralized flexibility.
   Tip: Define overarching guidelines (e.g., for cloud strategies), while teams can set individual preferences on their own.
4. Anchoring in management:Enterprise architecture must be “lived” in management. Managers should be aware of the EA design principles and integrate them into their work. This can be anchored initially through special training and then requires continuous governance.Tip: Conduct regular leadership training and workshops to teach EA principles.
5. Use of IT tools:When introducing EA, an IT tool should always be used. Complexity increases exponentially with the number of applications, processes, data, and actors. Powerful AI-supported tools can help here.
   Tip: EA tools can be made usable within weeks and can be connected to existing data sources with little effort.
6. Quantify EA success from the start:KPI frameworks allow EA to be properly steered in the area of tension between “optimization” and “innovation”. As a result, many questions regarding the profitability of EA can be addressed from the very beginning.
   Tip: Develop a dashboard with KPIs such as cost reduction, process optimization, and innovation rate.
7. Clearly defined governance:Collaboration in a virtual, overarching and agile organization can only be successful if dedicated EA governance is introduced and continuously adapted. This includes rules for collaboration and decision-making, defines communication, and integrates EA into all relevant decision-making and design processes.
   Tip: Establish a governance board that regularly reviews compliance with the EA Principles and makes adjustments.

Result

Implemented correctly, enterprise architecture is an indispensable means of successfully managing the increasing complexity of corporate landscapes. Companies that use EA strategically gain agility, innovation and efficiency, as the following examples impressively show.

The authors

Dr. Volker Barent is a business informatics specialist and heads the architecture department at Deloitte. He is an expert in enterprise architecture, cloud, software architecture as well as IT strategy and digitalization. As an engagement partner, he is responsible for major transformation projects in the automotive and energy industries as well as in the public sector.

 

 

Jochen Fauser is a computer scientist and Lead Alliance Partner for ServiceNow at Deloitte and is responsible for business relationships with the world’s leading companies. He advises clients on technology-driven business transformations from strategy to execution by combining industry knowledge with modern technology trends.