The document describes ten competitive advantages of using business architecture: 1) It allows for faster analysis of business risks and impacts from changes, settling stakeholder concerns. 2) It makes business goals explicit, understandable, and executable at all levels. 3) It enables prompt enrichment and alignment of critical capabilities as needed to maintain competitiveness. 4) It provides a compelling narrative to impact shareholder and analyst views. 5) It allows for optimal planning and definition of an executable change agenda to bolster returns.

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Ten competitive advantages gained with Business Architecture
Including when managing business risk, change, and performance hikes.
Describing the Business Architecture leads to systematic and managed design of performance
improvement and business change. Its use has grown exponentially with the advent of digital.
Business Architecture approach is made even more powerful as it is highly scalable. It can be
applied at translating the Corporate Mission making this explicit and usable, or it can be applied with
the same effect to a Business Function such as sales or innovation to improve capability and
performance. It can even be applied to resolving a problem treating both the symptoms and causes.
The approach has some associated terminology which I will return to later, like Business Motivation
Mapping, Strategy Maps, Capability Modelling, etc.
Traversing the Business Motivations, Value Propositions, Capabilities to arrive at an aligned project portfolio
Using this technique over the years in solving business problems, designing strategy and its
execution, I found these ten advantages. These enable anyone to develop a case for adopting this
approach as an internal practice.
These are presented below in no specific order.
Advantage One – Faster business risk and impact analysis settling stakeholder concerns.
When a competitor makes a move, change in the market and legislation takes place, or some
internal developments materialise; a divestment and merger, a key unit becoming depleted, it is
important to be able to crystallise the risks to the business if any, not least to prevent speculation. A
Business Architecture model allows gauging the impacts up and down the organisation, from the
corporate mission to the existing capabilities and teams. This can lead to creating robust responses
quickly, and more importantly only when these are necessitated.
Example: How does Brexit impact us and wherein the business are these impacts most
prominent? How do we respond? What are the priority areas and impacts to resolve? In what
time frame and sequence? What would be the cost?
Advantage Two – Achieving unity by making business goals explicit, understandable and
executable.
For each successive layer in the business, its top-level goals can be unpacked and described
explicitly in terms of the day-to-day workings. This can be defined all the way to the level of the
organisational units or teams (the Operating Model).

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For example, linking the analytics team’s tasks, and processes that may support the customer
with insights delivered every week, to serving the strategic level goal of being a partner to the
customer.
Advantage Three – Promptly enriching, aligning and future proofing critical capabilities.
Capabilities in the business need to be upholding the strategic value drivers or strategic pillars or
critical success factors, ensuring continued competitiveness. When these capabilities fall behind, it
is essential to intervene and make precise adjustments to make improvements, and not have to
mobilise a major transformation. Carrying out the right, versus costly over-, engineering contains
costs.
For example, if market competition is based on how quickly innovative products are introduced,
then what specific capabilities need elevating. Being aware and agreed already in the business
as to those contributing capabilities that shore up the specific business area, helps with speedy
change.
Advantage Four - Providing a compelling, cohesive, believable and evidence-based narrative
to impact shareholders and analysts’ views.
Example: We may communicate that ‘we recognise that our Sales Governance &
Administration costs are higher than the Industry. Our serious intent is taking these actions, in
these specific areas, over this time frame, and we seek to reverse the situation by this much
each year.’ At this point premeditating the likely objections, and providing the what-if
evaluations adds to communicating control over the issue.
Advantage Five – Optimal planning for execution, and defining a granular doable change
agenda, bolstering returns.
As well as assistance in discovering and evaluating the optimum sequence or roadmap, key
milestones and critical timelines, it also provides for effective monitoring. The Business Architecture
view and particularly the relationship of capabilities leads to asking the right questions ensuring
credible outcomes, effective change, its impacts, its risks, and cost.
Examples: When rolling out strategy, integrating mergers, divesting, entering new markets and
developing the business, smoke and mirrors need to be cleared.
Advantage Six – Meaningfully intervening in the right places to build cost efficiencies
without impinging on competitive agility.
Example: The agreed strategic value driver for the business is to have a highly skilled sales
force with deep client knowledge and relationships out competing other providers. Then it would
be more productive and effective to look for cost reductions in the sales support and service
activities rather than disrupt the sales unit itself.
Advantage Seven – Improved leadership.
Providing the set of principles that guide the value addition and optimisations needed in the
business functions. Just as importantly setting the right priorities for these functions such that it
avoids confusion and conflict, aligned meaningfully with the other priorities and business
imperatives. Coupled with this providing the ability to ask the right questions of the functions’
leaders and providing them with direction.
For example, a group of customers need a change in our services/products, they need different
outcomes. How important is this group to us? Do we ignore the change? Do we compensate in

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some other ways? Do we scope and incorporate the change required? Do we change our
prices? How do we track the different price plans? What do we do to offset the cost?
Figure Mapping the impact on the business functions of the Strategic Value Drivers (Strategy CSF)
Advantage Eight – Problem exploration and 360-degree sharp definition before mobilising
the correct course of action.
Perceiving the need to be seen to act, management often inadvertently embark on an off-target
course when a problem occurs and needs resolution. This is can be a costly diversion, with the
underlying problem staying resolutely anchored and resistant to all efforts. Through a sharper
definition of the problem, we can ensure there is integrity in the actions taken to remedy the
situation. a) By thoroughly examining the problem, tracing its path up and down the organisation
and b) tracing the potential actions and the path to resolution.
It can treat the both the symptoms and the causes. It also avoids cost and embarrassment.
Example: Problem of customer complaints is encountered. This is acted upon by improving the
appearance and user experience (form). Without realising that the problem is to do with
features (function) and the cost of ownership. Banking is a case in point.
Advantage Nine – Improving the Knowledge Capital in the business.
Structuring, documenting and disseminating domain level Subject Matter Expert (SME) knowledge
within the organisation and providing these via a reference library. This is made possible through
documenting business’ motivations and strategic possibilities, capability changes and benefits, the
user arena and employee workplaces form and functions, related to a specific domain. Emerging
technologies or evolving customer needs being a case in point.
Example: Emerging Innovation blueprints, IOT Architecture, Blockchains, etc.
Advantage Ten – Auditability, accountability and traceability in a structured approach.
Connecting day-to-day action and the valuable conceptual direction provided to the business by its
leadership. The performance improvement delivered by what MBA and their professors call
business fit and alignment.

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Nothing is perfect
I have been using Business Architecture in numerous projects since the mid-90s when I came
across it in Fujitsu ICL. This has included the design of Business Unit Strategies, divestments,
aligning an enterprise’s Corporate Strategy with its Business Unit Strategies and its investment
portfolio, all the way to IT core change. Because of the scalability of the approach, I have also used
it in optimising the sales, marketing, and customer servicing areas, discovering real gems along the
way in improving performance many folds.
As a word of caution, the approach can become highly structural if not careful. Structural maturity is
emphasised like successive levels process and IT automation and integration and creating common
shared services. It ignores the following.
1) The X factor in the organisation. The human dynamics of teams and skill, beliefs, inspirations,
morale. The people integration through common purpose that can catapult performance to
stellar heights is ignored.
2) It also ignores the powerful link between customers and brands. A link that further projects itself
into internal values, culture, and the individual motivations beyond monetary rewards.
3) Builds on creating efficiencies in the current paradigm, it can ignore aggregation and paradigm
change. For example, instead of creating increased efficiencies in the operation of sales
through CRM, converting to services oriented selling and a pull sales paradigm.
We work hard in minimising the impact of the last two points when using this method. We include
brand and values alignment parameters, and leave room to incorporate paradigm shifts where
needed. It is possible to minimise these limitations.
The approach can also become rigid as it seeks to entrench a vocabulary in the business. Which we
also do not recommend. As we know that when an organisation adopts its own language and fails to
understand the emerging language outside its business, it has stopped learning and changing. It
misses what the CEO of Intel once explained as; “when I notice that there is a change in language
and terminology outside the business which we do not understand, an inflexion point (disruption) is
emerging in the industry”.
Sikander is a Partner in Value Dynamics LLP. A London-based innovation services firm. We help
clients grow their revenues profitably. Our services include designing business growth, product and
services innovation, and solving limiting problems.