An executive presentation to get a buy-in from our executive team that describes its background, structure, the need for enterprise architecture, its current position, best practices, the need for standards, and a cost-benefit analysis, and what the organization must do to ensure its growth and sustain its business operations.

1. SCS 2692
Final Project
Educational Curve Inc.
By: Debashis Chanda
Date: Dec 8, 2015

2. COMPANY BACKGROUND

3. EDUCATIONAL CURVE INC. (ECI)
• Established 2014, with a vision to be a low-cost education service
provider
• Primary market niche:
• Immigrants
• International professionals seeking entry into Canadian market
• High school graduates
• Consists of 15 employees – administrators, teachers, advisors,
technical team, finance team, and management

4. CURRENT STRUCTURE
• Enterprise structure – currently fragmented (silos) with low level of
cohesion between departments
• Enterprise Architecture currently at Stage 1
• Mostly paper-based organization
• Limited website services – no service to enroll online established
• IT systems – currently minimal, using MS-Excel for record-keeping.
• No decision on standard software package to upgrade from MS-Excel
application
• Networking services on premises to connect to classrooms and conduct
payment services only

5. SERVICES OFFERED BY ECI
• Advisory Services
• Conducting 1 to 1 sessions for first level evaluation
• Credential Verification – evaluate and verify the credentials presented by a
student and offer options, and evaluate requirements for enrollment
• Gauge knowledge by conducting assessment test and evaluate level to pursue
• Registration Services
• Successful post-test evaluation results and manager’s approval required for
enrollment on desired program
• Payment Services
• Three types available – Cash, Credit, and Debit

6. LESSONS FOR EDUCATIONAL CURVE INC.

7. LESSONS LEARNED
• Lack of standard software preventing seamless coordination of
business activities
• Excel application not a viable long-term solution for recording and managing
data
• Too many applications in premises do not coordinate and no integration
• Profits will not be realized and losses can be compounded
• ECI Inc. paper-based formats add to materials expenses, and business overhead
expenses cannot be tracked
• Business potential will be diminished
• Eg: ECI’s business strategy for long-term cannot be sustained without
coordinating current fragmented structure

8. LESSONS LEARNED
• ECI could become a target for takeover from competitors
• Given its market share for attracting new immigrants, students etc.
• Lack of IT strategy
• Organization is running only on Excel, which does not meet its long-term
business & IT strategy for growth
• ECI Inc. has no IT strategy in place to effectively deal with technological and
business changes
• Without it , it cannot support its current business model over the long-term
• Slow time to deliver services and decreasing operational efficiency

9. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

10. WHY DO ECI NEED ONE?
• “Enterprise Architecture when done properly is the critical instrument
for enterprise efficiency in short-, mid- and long-terms. EA impacts
the effect of the business operational processes, their cost and
associated risks– the key factors for company efficiency even at
tough times1”

11. WHY DO ECI NEED ONE?
• Ability to adapt to future changes in organization or market forces
• Changes in course offerings due to demand required by employers
• Changes in technology to outsource our billing functions, for example
• To eliminate or merge departments to reduce processing time
• Integrate existing Excel application with applications available from
external CRM vendors
• Allow the organization to reduce the impact of complete overhaul
• Allow to reduce time in learning new applications with merging existing
application with new application

12. WHY DO ECI NEED ONE?
• Faster delivery in our services and for expansion2
• Reducing the advisory process / assessment to registration time from days to hours
• Will allow to focus enterprise requirements2
• E.A will allow organization to keep track records of our needs and what resources
need allocation priority
• Reduce gaps and architecture conflicts2
• Conducting gap analysis of current situation and what requirements need to be
fulfilled
• Standards formed and allow to maintain consistency in E.A direction2
• E.A industry standards will allow to adhere to tried and true practices

13. WHY DO ECI NEED ONE?
• Preview of the current and future target enterprise architecture vision
• Current state of the organization will have to referenced against the future state
to eliminate gaps and view the benefits of possible adjustments to the
organization
• Reduce expenses and allow profits to grow
• Overhead expenses can be reduced through waste reduction and streamlining
process
• Capital can be saved and allow to invest in service improvement and expansion
• Security
• Allows ECI to follow the best practices of information security on how we
manage our data

14. ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORK & LANGUAGES FOR
PROPOSED SYSTEM

15. FRAMEWORKS AND LANGUAGES
• “They provide principles and practices for creating and using the
architecture…It structures architects' thinking by dividing the
architecture description into domains, layers or views, and offers
models7”
• Many frameworks used by organizations
• Each framework has it strengths and weakness
• Common ones used by organizations -TOGAF and Zachman framework
• UML language most common – Activity diagram most useful to
comprehend

16. HOW FRAMEWORKS & LANGUAGES CAN HELP ECI’S
TARGET ARCHITECTURE?
• TOGAF ideal choice
• Industry standard wide use with 9 phases – from preliminary to implementation
• ECI’s mgt needs to assess their situation on the preliminary stage
• Mgt support is required to proceed with subsequent phases
• Proposed ECI target architecture compared against baseline (see Slides 19 & 20)
• Business requirement phase (process enhancement)
• CurrentAdvisory process and Registration Phase meld to one
• Business value could be registration and advisory time reduction
• Speeding up our services to meet the demand of student enrollments
• Information Systems architecture
• Excel applications and other applications in premises, and seeking alternatives to upgrade
• Technology architecture
• Assessing ECI’s networking structure
• IT dept. believes systems are capable to handle the transition. Major upgrades not required

17. HOW FRAMEWORKS & LANGUAGES CAN HELP
ECI’S TARGET ARCHITECTURE?
• Opportunities & Solutions phase
• Several options considered and vendors identified
• 1. Stay with existing model and continue as-is
• 2. Build-in house s/w to meet the ECI requirements
• 3. Seek external vendors that have experience and offer services types - Salesforce,WorkBooks, aGora (Slides 40-44)
• Migration Planning
• Education required to teach ECI employees to use a CRM system
• Phased strategy preferable within ECI to give time to users to understand the system (while utilising old and new methods)
• To keep operations running without business downtime
• Implementation Governance
• Ensure no scope creep occurs and all primary objectives are attainable
• All risks identified with relation to this proposed implementation
• Architecture Change Management
• New baseline structure by ECI will be created to serve as a benchmark for the next or any upgrades to future changes
• Vendors support will be required for the time being to ensure product works and meet or exceed ECI’s expectations and their business/IT
strategy

18. HOW FRAMEWORKS & LANGUAGES CAN HELP
ECI’S TARGET ARCHITECTURE?
• ECI a start-up organization
• No E.A consultant on-site and it is cost prohibitive at Stage 1 maturity level
• ECI’s IT personnel can assist in the process to help the organization
• E.A language –UML
• Use by IT personnel and can model organization structure, and internal constructs of
data structure of the current system
• Display results in an plain language the constructs of the diagram and the relations of the data
structures

19. CURRENT PROCESS STRUCTURE
ACTIVITY DIAGRAM - CURRENT ARCHITECTURE
StudentAdvisoryRegistrationPayment
Phase
Credential
Review
Student interviewed
by the Advisor
First Level
Approval provided
If NO,
then student
is not accepted
NO
YES
If YES, enrolment and program
selected
Test
Assessment test
results &
2nd
interview
Proceed to
assessment testing
Enrollment Setup
Request
Payment
Payment made to book a class
Payment accepted
and paid in full
Make
Payment
Receipt
Issued
Proceed to
class

20. PROPOSED PROCESS STRUCTURE
ACTIVITY DIAGRAM - PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
Student
Advisory&
Registration
Payment
Phase
Enrollment
Setup
Student interviewed
And assessed
Approval provided
to enroll
Test
Proceed to
assessment testing
Credential Review &
Management
Approval
Request
Payment
Payment made to book a class
Payment accepted
and paid in full
Make
Payment
Receipt
Issued
Proceed to
class

21. APPROPRIATE GOVERNANCE

22. WHY GOVERNANCE?
• To conduct ethical business decisions and builds trust that engenders
teamwork to pursue and achieve stretch goals3
• Good governance defines checks and balances that shape roles and
responsibilities3
• Sound governance requires education to reinforce a company’s
cultural standards3
• With effective training, risk issues can be resolved with minimal loss
to business
• Good governance equates to commitment to standards and creating
ethical behavior as a core competency3

23. HOW CAN GOVERNANCE HELP AT ECI?
• Following would be ideal
• Corporate Governance
• Ensuring legitimate practices are followed by employees as mandated by
management
• Example, following procedures on assessing students and approval must be given by
management prior to enrollment
• Reducing operational risk
• IT Governance
• IT team aligning with the business strategy to expedite technical operations4
• Metrics in place to measure performance of business4
• Example, how many total hours spent on advising and registration in 1 day? Or Is ECI
meeting its budgetary objectives?

24. HOW CAN GOVERNANCE HELP AT ECI?
• Data Governance
• Ensuring high-quality, secure, and reliable data for management to make
decisions
• Example, unadulterated data that has all the necessary student information to make
adjustments to curriculum or introduce new courses, Or, have proper security
procedures have been implemented to ensure data is secure from tampering?
• Excel security is inadequate, easily tampered, mistakes can be made to syntax
• Auto-error connection cumbersome and not always followed by users
• Administrators are not advanced users of Excel and lack skills to secure data

25. TECHNICAL OVERSIGHT

26. OVERSIGHT
• Critical to an organization and requires assessment at every stage
• Necessary to evaluate the changes required to be made to baseline
structure to create an ideal future solution
• E. Architect oversee the process to offer solutions and exceptions
(based on costs, time, weighing risks)
• Required in the process of RFP, RFQ, or RFI
• Vendors offers, services, costs, etc.

27. HOW OVERSIGHT CAN ASSIST ECI?
• Ensuring procedures will be followed when an implementation is completed
• RFI most preferred, shortest time for assessment and deployment requires
to be critiqued to see if it meet ECI requirements
• Ensuring the new software expedite ECI’s processes and expectations
• Employees adhering to the new standards and procedures
• Ensuring all requirements been noted to prevent scope creep in future
• Review the IT strategy if it aligns with our business strategy
• Is the E.A program bringing any benefits to the organization’s ROI?
• Are there any exceptions can be made to this project?

28. PROPER TRACEABILITY

29. TRACEABILITY
• “Traceability is the means of capturing implementation and dependency
relationships in the model5.”
• Displays end to end relationships in diagrams – forwards or backwards
• Increases accuracy in modelling when requirements change
• Helps the information architect to ensure all of the constructs that have
developed have business meaning6
• Advises the coding team exactly how to transform the models provided
they have comprehensive set of tests which covers all aspects of the data6
• Assures senior stakeholders that all of the data requirements have been
met6

30. EXAMPLE OF TRACEABILITY
Source: http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/resources/demos/traceabilitytools/traceability.htm

31. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE TOOLS

32. THE NEED FOR ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE TOOLS
• Several tools available in the market utilized by various firms
• Archimate / IBM Rational Rhapsody / Mega Suite, etc.
• Archi tool is free and can be used by IT personnel at no cost to ECI
• Diagrams created from scratch to plan, analyze and communicate architecture using simple drag
& drop interface8
• Various options available to utilize a particular language
• Organization and stakeholders will be given analytics about the metrics and insight to understand
where to focus time and resources8
• Displays a roadmap that visually describe the organisation’s architecture content over time8
• Can be customized to meet the requirements of the organization
• With the use of Archi – costs saved internally at ECI
• But vendor support required implement the structure created on application to support enterprise strategy

33. BEST PRACTICES & PATTERNS

34. INDUSTRY BEST PRACTICES
• CharterYour EA Program10
• Develop (and Execute) a Communications Plan10
• Treat Each Iteration Like a Project10
• StartWith the Business Strategy and Obtain Business Sponsorship10
• Do the Future State Before theCurrent State10
• Be Pragmatic10
• Don't Forget Governance10
• Set Up a Measurement Program10
• Track EA Program Maturity10
• Pay as MuchAttention to Competencies as to Skills10

35. BEST PRACTICES ECI MUST FOLLOW
• ECI’s management
• Support must be provided at all times to the teams and employees
• Must remain committed in the long term to transform their business to reap business benefits
• A continuous program of change and maintenance is required to for ECI to achieve best results
• New rules of doing business that meet the industry standard, for e.g. data assurance need to be followed to
maintain data integrity
• Procedures of conducting ECI’s critical services need to be adhered
• Advisory and Registration procedures in the right manner need to be accomplished to ensure the right students are
enrolled
• Communicate to employees that training is essential for business to succeed to reap the benefits
• To reach the desired state. ECI mgt must envision what would possible state would they like to be in to
maximize its potential
• Governance is essential, all processes, procedures, business activities, and IT activities must be adhere to
strict to full the organization’s strategy
• Metrics: How long a process of enrolling students take in the new system? How many students can we enroll
in 1 hour / 1 day compared to old process?

36. PATTERNS ECI CAN FOLLOW
• Custom-built not feasible for a start-up organization
• COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) solution
• Common standard
• ECI can seek a 3rd party vendor to upgrade the application from Excel
• Cost advantageous
• ECI can offer to purchase at a minimal cost than if custom-built and has fast deployment time
• Cloud Solution
• Gaining pattern of companies moving to this direction
• Can work with existing hardware, thereby reducing capital costs
• Streamline the existing processes and conducting operations in less time
• Accessibility
• Improves accessibility for management and students to access reports or access grades, respectively, at
anytime, anywhere

37. STANDARDS BASED ENTERPRISE

38. BENEFITS OF HAVING A STANDARDS BASED ENTERPRISE
• Commitment to quality
• Processing / Data Quality / Security / Service
• Meeting SLA’s on time, and most possibly same-day SLA
• Security on all formats will be enable trust in the organization
• Adhering to one type of technology will enable to focus on a single software and minimize
costs to upgrades
• Reducing business risk
• Business continuity managed by enabling backups or conducting audit to ensure all
procedure are followed
• Improves business performance
• Enabling cost control and cost savings, thereby more capital saved for future
investments or projects

39. BENEFITS OF HAVING A STANDARDS BASED ENTERPRISE
• Increased market share
• Trust in the organization will expand, more business organizations will interact with
firms to expand their operations. For e.g. banks will provide loans to a trusted
organization, technology companies will or may provide discount for purchases
• Customer satisfaction
• Satisfied customers will do more business with the organization, and reputation will
grow
• Access to new markets
• New markets will be ripe for expansion and will allow business to grow and attract
clients from non-standard adherent organizations
• Improves efficiency and productivity in business operations

40. COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS

41. COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
• Vendor 1: SalesForce – provides Cloud-based option
• All relevant features and a few similar features to current process
such as the coaching feature
Salesforce Cost per user
Enterprise Edition $30/user per month
1:1 coaching feature included (desirable for
ECI) and related features 7.5/user per month
Total *$2250 US
Assuming 5 users to using this service
[(30*5*12)]+[7.5*5*12] $3047 CDN
Source: http://www.salesforce.org/highered_product/sales-cloud/

42. COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
• Vendor 2:WorkBooks –Web-based CRM
• Myriad features available; however, nothing specific required for ECI
WorkBooks Costs
Price per User
WorkBooks CRM Pro Option (10GB Storage)* $600.00 / year
Microsoft Outlook Connector $78.00/ year
System Admin Training course $1,400.00
*Security features, Audit, Multi--currency and
Multi-Company options $2,078.00 / year U.S
Total $2,814.00 / year CDN
Assuming 5 users in company to use this
service $14,070 / year CDN
Source: http://www.workbooks.com/sites/default/files/image/Price%20Nov%2014%20-%20USD_0.PDF

43. COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
• Vendor 3: aGora - provides Cloud-based and PC based options
• Myriad features available; specific features available for ECI
aGora Cost per user
Cloud Option
Gold Professional Option $98.00*/m
Additional user / month $7.50
Relevant Features included in Gold Option
Total per year $1,446.00/ year
*98 for 2 users/month (initial) and 7.5 per additional
user/(month)
aGora Desktop Option
Gold Option $28 */m
Additional user $3.42
All relevant features included
Total per year
$459.12 / year*
US
*28 for 2 users/mth (initial) and 3.42 per
additional user/(mth)
(28*12) + [(3.42*3users)*12months)] $621.88 CDN
Source: https://www.agora-erp.com/ca/pricing/pricingdesktop and https://www.agora-erp.com/ca/pricing/pricingcloud

44. RECOMMENDATIONS
• As a cost-conscious organization and with limited funds for a start-up
organization
• Best option would be aGoraCRM (Desktop Option)
• Has 24*7 online support
• Expandable to many users with additional fee
• Specializes in educational centres – a perfect fit for ECI
• Extendable with other modules and will provide cost efficiency solutions for ECI

45. REFERENCES
• 1) Ivanov, K. Why Companies Do Need Enterprise Architecture at Downturn? (June 14, 2009) http://www.ariscommunity.com/users/koiv/2009-06-14-why-
companies-do-need-enterprise-architecture-downturn
• 2) Absence of EA and Risks. Enterprise Architect. http://www.enterprisearchitects.eu/ea/riskswithoutea
• 3) Stephens, J. B. Companies Need Sound Governance. February 2014.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2014/February/pages/CompaniesNeedSoundGovernance.aspx
• 4) Schwartz, K.D. IT Governance Definition and Solutions. (May 22, 2007). http://www.cio.com/article/2438931/governance/it-governance-definition-and-
solutions.html?page=2
• 5) Sparx Systems. Traceability in EA. http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/traceability.html
• 6) Mun, Almira. SCS-3105 Enterprise Architecture Development and Governance - Information Architecture. PowerPoint slide 19
• 7) Enterprise Architecture framework. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture_framework
• 8) Corso: From Ideas to Delivery. http://www.corso3.com/enterprise-architecture
• 9) Lapkin, A. Ten Best Practices of EA. Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit 2007. http://www.btmg.biz/EA_Kitty3/Documents/Gartner/Gartner9.pdf