Standartization & Integration - Dimentions Of It Enterprise Architecture

In a firm operation, MIT CISR defines Enterprise Architecture as an organizing logic between the business and Information Technology sides over two dimensions; standardization and integration. According to this formulation, standardization is defined as following the same procedure for processes, while the sharing of data between processes is called integration (Ross et al. 2006).

Johnson & Johnson (Ross 2003) can serve as example for its IT Enterprise Application. In 1995, J&J had around 150 operating firms and a large part of its revenue success was attributed to this organization that gave sizeable financial freedom to the managers of each company.

This operating model, however, created dissatisfaction with the customers, left to deal with each of the operating companies independently. To overcome this and create a single point of contact, J&J decided to roll out a new EA.

The first step of this process was to conduct training sessions over an 18 months period. The second and most relevant step was the implementation of a single global network configuration.

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Over the following years, other measures were implemented, including the creation of sectors to improve integration. The outcome over the years proved successful and allowed J&J to improve both standardization and integration. The first with defined procedures across the different companies and the second with the use of common market and other critical databases. Patex can follow different paths to find future technologies to improve its packaging and distribution technology.

One of the possible approaches is to follow the framework in Technology Foresight posited by Reger (2001).

When chosen this approach, the company will first need to define its goal and search scope. In this case, Patex will be looking for a project-based and monitoring approach. The project approach will allow the company to focus on the, relatively narrow, scope of adding features to the packaging while the monitoring will allow for a faster execution by focusing on already existing technology and incremental change. When selecting sources, the company can choose among several popular channels such as magazines, financial reports and experts’ interview, but it must not forget to investigate least popular sources as well.

One of this can be the Venture Capital Market, given the expanding nature of the Internet of Packaging technology. During the data collection, Patex can choose among different actors, but it will be necessary to include in this process external scouts and experts given the novelty aspect of the researched topic. During this step, moreover, Patex can choose to apply a Delphi Method (Gordon 1994) to better organize and refine the insights gained from the experts and external scouts. By choosing an internal facilitator responsible in defining the topic, a small-size panel can be formed. By means of surveys, the facilitator will gather information and thanks to the iterative approach of the Delphi Method this step can be repeated until enough future technologies are gathered. Beside the novelty of the topic, other reasons for choosing this method are the very specific area and the need to gather qualitative information to be used by the internal R&D department in later phases of the chosen framework.

After having identified the technologies, Patex chose to focus on the Service Orientation and Integration of users and customers trends defined by Fleisch et al. (2014). To leave networking out of the watches, the company decided to add an RFID chip to the packaging. Beside helping with tracking and logistic, this tag will be useful also for services directed to the customers. A large part of communications between Patex and the end-user will occur through a newly developed smartphone app. This will allow different use cases among which customer feedbacks and a more interactive interface for the company’s loyalty program, set to allow watches mass-customization in later releases. These achievements, however, will require a relevant work and training investment from the company. Before rolling out all these new features, Patex will have to undergo a radical innovation in the IT Enterprise Architecture bringing the company from a Standardized Technology maturity to a Rationalized Data (Ross 2003), with shared customer and product databases.