Selling EA

Although not that professional, today, I will turn to a sells man selling our EA product to another company. So, I need to try my best to demonstrate the advantages of EA in order to convince the company buying our product.

Before that, I need to do some research work about the company. Applying the knowledge I have learned, have a brief analysis about the business of the company. And try to find their gaps that need to be fixed with EA. Are their IT departs working consistently? Are their systems working corporately? Does any depart act as the “short slab” of the company?

After the research, I could start to have a meeting with the CIO of the company (CEO is very busy). I will help them to analyze the problems exist in the company by using the preparation. I believe no company is perfect. So, there must be some problems that I could find to analyze with EA. After finding the problem, I will try to convince them using the EA.

During the negotiation, I need to arrange my opinion from their angles, which are “Reduce costs”, “Increase revenue”, “Enter new markets” and “Increase market share”. And it also works when you talk to CEO.

How EA help them to reduce the cost? Although the company will pay us the money to do the EA. However, after reorganize the whole architecture of the company, they may make better use of the systems or have a better way to arrange their budget. In detail, I could ask them the questions like: “Is your organization spending too much money building IT systems that deliver inadequate business value?” or “Is IT systems as improving or hampering your business agility? “ If yes, I will calculate the money they will save after reorganization. I could make a model to calculate the amount of more money they will save after applying our system. And after the math work, actually I will find they could save money hiring us.

How could EA help them to increase revenue? EA will apply a global analysis to the whole organization. I will briefly analyze the whole structure of the organization using any model of EA to find the gap existing in the system. And calculate the increment of revenue after the gaps are fixed. I will ask questions like “Is there a growing divide between your business and IT personnel?” Fixing that will help them to increase the venue.

How could EA help them to increase the market share? EA will reorganize the whole supply chain or others things connecting to the market. If the organize works well in every part of their business, the market share will increase automatically.

Maybe, after all these I have convinced their CIO. And their CIO may say that “Congratulations! You can talk with our CEO when he drop by after a short moment.” Before seeing the CEO, I think I should just review the information about the company and the business etiquette. Remember to focus on the important things as the CEO is usually very busy. I think after persuading that the EA will benefit the company in several aspects, he will definitely agree my suggestion and apply my EA system.

Reference:

[1] http://blogs.forrester.com/alex_cullen/10-06-04-how_would_you_sell_business_architecture_your_ceo

Review & analysis on the RBS IT failure

The RBS IT failure is a typical IT failure happened recently.

The RBS (The Royal Bank of Scotland) recently has encountered a serious IT failure and losing £125 million to compensate customers, leading its half-year loss to £1.5 billion, comparing to the £794 mission loss a year before. Mr. Hester, The CEO of RBS said that he  would not take a bonus this year because the loss caused by the IT failure.

How serious problems could IT failure cause? The answer cannot be more straightforward: the software update failure. How could software updating caused such a serious problem? I just want to quote the words of Mr. Tyrie,  the chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee:" every night the bank was processing about 20 million transactions in batches. When an Edinburgh-based team did maintenance work on the system, one of these batch processes failed."[1] Imagine what will happen if more than 20 million transactions are blocked in one night. I think RBS is so lucky losing such little money.

Nowadays, a lot of business, especially CEO and CIO think that IT department is totally a cost to the company. There is no need to invest too much money in the IT department. The fact is that IT investment is decreasing instead of increasing as the figure blow shows.



Although, IT truly has brought a lot of disadvantages to companies. These systems, which are too complex are dragging the development of the companies. These useless legacy systems are another waste of the originally tight budge. However, can companies live without IT?

The answer is never. How can these data be managed without the efficient DBM? How can these business logic be implemented without the ERP system? Most importantly and seriously, people nowadays has got used to IT. In other words people cannot work without turning on their laptops.

The investment of IT is still badly needed. However, it should be the wise investment. Organizations should reorganize the IT sources existed and make a detailed investment plan in IT. In term of the RBS case, the money will not lost if the bank could invest more money in the security issues. Software Security is the gap existed in the whole system.

I still want to warn the plan makers that, again, the money should be invested wisely. How many banks invested millions of dollars buying lasted updated computers only to run Microsoft Word? Every cent is meaningful if used in the right way.

Lucky, after the accident, other banks also start to check their IT systems, but why do not they do things earlier?


Refer:
[1]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18648359

1st week journal for the EA

To be honest, the EA class in CMU is the first time I do some work in this field. It is also the first time I have heard the word “EA”.I will record what I have learned in the first class and my opinion about EA in this article.

In the first class, the professor introduced the concept of EA to us by the definition of two experts in this field. And I know that EA is a subject that could help organizations to handle the development of each part wisely. Then the professor introduces the problems existed in the organizations. He used the picture of Spaghetti, and then cited the Spaghetti syndrome to tell us the problems in the organizations. When the organization becomes large enough, the management will be extremely valuable for them. Without the good management, the different departments can hardly work together in harmony. Then, I also got that EA plays an crucial role in connecting IT with the Business. It has made considerable waste because business people do not know IT. And, the EA could offer the organization a large picture of the whole organization. It tells how money should be invested to each department, and how to deal with the connection between the different departments. Even, some companies fail not because the lacking of technology, but because of failure EA work instead.

Then, I learned further about the EA. I learned the history of EA and the EA cube model. EA model offers a comprehensive way to solve the problems lie in organizations. Later, the professor gave some practical examples such as the Federal Enterprise Architecture Program of the Whitehouse, and the EA program made by the MIT.

The professor left as the assignment of case study with the article from the MIT Sloan. By reading and analyzing the article, I got to know that the companies have got serious problem with the IT departments. These departments cost too much on IT because IT has becoming too complex and risky. Then I did the case study on that topic to detailed analyze the problems with the company and provide some possible solutions.

I just feel excited to learn EA because I want to analyze the technology in a higher position and provide the solution to the possible problems. Also, the practical projects with the SA government are truly exciting. I will try my best to study this lesson well.