Previous Blog illustrated the architecture vision. Moving on to Business Architecturein the context of Order and buy unit we used Use case Models and Activity Models (as shown below) that describes the business processes of an enterprise in terms of use cases and actors corresponding to business processes and organizational participants ,Information Exchange Matrix documents the information exchange requirements for an enterprise achitecture and Information Exhange requirements matrix that express the relationship across business entities and focus on characteristics of the information exchanges such as performance & security.
As per our realization it is essential for any business architecture exercise to
a>Identify the key business function within the scope at the architecture and classify those functions into organisation units within the business - Structured Analysis.
b>Perform the breakdown of business functions across actors and organisation allowing the actors in a fuction to be identified and permits a breakdown into service supporting/delivery of functional capibility - Use Case Analysis.
c>Perform the breakdown of a function or business service through process model allows the elements of the process to be identified and permits the identification of lower business level business services or functions-Process Modelling.
d>To identify required service granularity level , boundaries and contract functions .Business services are specific functions that have explicit ,defined boundaries that are explicitly governed.A service Contract covers the business(functional interface and also the technology /data interface) .Business Architecture will define the service contract at the Business/Function Level.
Lets also see the objectives at generic level before taking up Order & Buy in detail with Business Architecture perspective.
- Describing the Baseline Business Architecture .
- To develop a Target Business Architecture, describing functional and information aspects of the business environment, based on the business principles, business goals and business drivers .
- To analyze the gaps between the Baseline and Target Business Architectures .
- To select the relevant architecture viewpoints that will enable the architect to demonstrate how the stakeholder concerns are addressed in the Business Architecture .
- To select the relevant tools and techniques to be used in association with the selected viewpoints .
In the context of Order and Buy system i am just concentrating on Motor and Home Insurance business capaibility we derived
AS-IS state of Business Architecture:
- Currently the Enterprise does not have the capability to develop the new consolidated Order & Buy systems.
- The existing infrastructure operations team has the capability to provide the Enterprise infrastructure required for this architecture work.
- Limited capability in e-commerce .
- Business capability assessment.
- Existing Order & Buy systems perform the following main functionalities– Allow a customer to state his needs ,Choose a suitable product,Have interactive session and get a suitable quote and finally purchase the policy.
- The current call-center supports the huge customer base for all products.
- All the Order & Buy systems have similar functionality but are on various platforms need to improve this and load the current system with more functionality.
- Call-Centre usage is more with most customers relying on call-centre to satisfy their related needs once a policy has been purchased.
Business Service GAP Analysis
TO-BE state of Business Architecture
- Future state aspiration for performance of each level of capability
- Bring all Order & Buy systems onto same platform to achieve optimization in all areas including cost, user-experience, implementing changes in terms of products or regulatory features etc.
- Minimize dependency on call-center for features that can be migrated to the Order & Buy systems thereby reducing operational cost of maintaining a huge call-center
- Business case and changes required
- New Order & Buy system to be developed to support all products.
- A single platform to be developed to support the online application.
- he new online system to be heavily loaded with features that are currently supported by the call-center applications.
- ·Value proposition Customer Experience – Better user-experience due to enhanced features increasing customer-satisfaction,Call-Center Manager – Reduction in Call-center OPEX costs and reduced attrition rates due to a more realistic load,Assess and define procurement requirement.
- Enlist the use of a s/w service provider – Need to roll-out RFPs for the same
- nternal Infrastructure team to cater to the infrastructure needs of this new business proposition
- Dedicated Business Analyst and customer experience to be closely involved throughout the Architecture work lifecycle
- Assess Business risk-the new order & Buy system not performing in a reliable manner due to new platform.A significant change to the current online system may increase end-customer discomfort initially thereby existing customers still turning to call-center for the other features will still result in high call-center usage
Moving on to Next Blog
1 Comment
