The digital age that the world exists in 2020 has massive ramifications for business. In order for a company of significant size to sustain itself in modern markets, it must have an excellent technical base.
One of the ways a company establishes that technical base is through enterprise architecture. If you've spent a significant amount of time in the information technology world, chances are that you've come across this phrase.
In this article, you'll learn the enterprise architecture definition and five reasons why you need to add this skill to your arsenal as soon as possible.
Enterprise Architecture Definition
The first step to understanding why you need to learn enterprise architecture is to first understand its definition. Although it's a complicated term, don't be scared. Enterprise architecture is actually a fairly simple overall concept.
Enterprise architecture is the practice of solving business problems and implementing company strategies. It uses structured IT processes and frameworks. In essence, it opens your company up to an investigation of how it can use a frame of technology architecture to execute on its vision and mission.
1. Understand Your Organization's Systems
As an employee, there are several ways to make yourself more valuable to the company. One of the best ways of doing exactly that is to build an intimate knowledge of the company. By knowing more and more proprietary info about how the business runs, the company will be all the more indebted to your knowledge. Replacing you would mean creating a massive knowledge gap in your backfill.
Learning enterprise architecture will allow you to understand the different systems that your IT uses. Having a solid understanding of these systems will allow you to be put on projects closer to the technical side of things, where you can contribute your technical knowledge.
An employee that doesn't have this knowledge is at a severe disadvantage because they cannot see the big picture. Thus, they will become very siloed in their own role, not having a good understanding of how things work outside of their own individual contributions. This will prevent them from moving either up the ladder or laterally into another department.
2. Optimize Your Organization's Processes
Once you have a solid understanding of your organization's processes, the natural next step is to begin advising on these processes to figure out ways that they can be optimized. The more that you can optimize your company's processes using enterprise architecture, the more that you'll be able to save your company money.
Your company will be able to translate these savings into lower prices for consumers (resulting in more customers and a higher market share), or into a higher profit margin. Either way, there are probably going to be great things in store for you as the employee who brought that optimization about.
You may get a bonus that's a percentage of the cost savings that you have induced, or you might get the opportunity to move up the ladder. Either way, you'll be rewarded for your work for sure.
3. Remove the Need for Outsourced Technical Support
One of the most common reasons why a business will outsource technical support is to develop the kind of framework that someone with the knowledge of enterprise architecture would be able to develop. This is especially necessary whenever a company is just starting off and needs a technical base, or is launching a new product line.
If you take the right certification and gain this knowledge, the outsourced support will no longer be required. This will save the company money because they'll put you on the projects that they would have otherwise outsourced. You'll get to work on some very fundamental stuff that lays the base for your company's technical processes.
4. Re-design During a Major Change
Another common application of enterprise architecture knowledge is whenever a major change in the company comes about. This could be when a company pivots its business to change its product line and enter a new market.
Or, let's say that your company is bought by a larger company. The business will have to develop enterprise architecture that is in line with what is already in place at the parent company. There's no better person to do that than someone who has intimate knowledge of the child company's processes and the enterprise architecture experience to boot.
Whenever a major change like this happens, being the person that is relied on to make sure that things are set up on the technical side can only be a good thing for your career and position in the company.
5. Level Up Your Career
We get it. You're tired of where you're at. You don't want to just be an individual contributor anymore, stuck on the same old boring projects. Instead, you're more than ready to spread your wings and start managing your own team. Or, at the very least, you're ready to move upwards and onwards toward far more interesting projects.
The best way to make this happen and level up your career is to increase your skillset. And what's the best way to increase your skillset in a proven fashion?
Certifications!
Not only will the certification give you the knowledge you need to practice the new skill that you want to add, but it will also stamp your resume with the weight and authority of the governing body that issues the certificate. The end result is a better chance of you leveling up into the positions that you want to be in.
An enterprise architecture certification is certainly the way to go if you've decided that you want to take your career to the next rung on the ladder in the information technology world.
Putting it Together
There you have it - now that you know the enterprise architecture definition and why it matters, you're ready to take the necessary certifications to see these benefits materialize at your company and in your career.
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