Why Organisations Need an EA Tool
You won’t be surprised to learn that we at EAS think it’s a given that any medium or greater-sized organisations need an EA Tool in order to effectively manage and optimize their complex business structures, processes, and technology landscapes.
Read on for some examples of how and where an EA Tool can help an organisation, and to learn how we think the 2023 Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for EA Tools can help you pick the right tool for your needs:
- Holistic View: If you can’t look across your enterprise and see how your people, processes and systems are related, connected and the impact of changing those things then you can’t make properly informed decisions. Depending on knowledge that is not formally documented, such as information held only in people’s minds, results in incomplete and biased data, leading to less effective decision-making. EA tools provide the ability to have a holistic view of an organisation’s entire architecture, covering everything from business processes, data, applications, and technology infrastructure to regulation, external impacts, etc – note, the specific elements captured depend on the focal points of the organisation.
- Strategic Alignment: You can have strategic plans in place but if they are disjointed from the reality of the organisation they are changing then the implementation of those plans become much harder and the risk of failure is much higher. A good EA tool allows you to map business goals to initiatives and the impacts of those initiatives can be seen on your people, processes and systems. This means, leaders can ensure that technology investments support and enhance overall organizational objectives.
- Change Management: Often the initial phase of a change project is analysis to understand the impact of the proposed change on the organisation. We have also seen many examples of organisations repeating the same analysis over again, at immense cost both from a people and time perspective, as ongoing change has not been captured. If you have captured and maintained your current state in an EA tool, then this information is immediately available to project teams.
- Risk Management: Understanding risks such as end of life dates for technologies or applications, technical debt, new vulnerabilities and, crucially, the impact on critical business processes is important to understanding your potential exposure. It is then the plans and actions based on this understanding that is key to mitigating risk. Communicating what your risks are and the plans in place to address them, gives management confidence that you are in control
- Cost Optimisation: Managing costs effectively is a key requirement for businesses at any time, but especially in the current climate, when the need to tightly manage costs is crucial. If you don’t understand where your costs are being incurred, or why, then effective cost decisions are not being made. An EA tool can identify rationalisation opportunities across the application and technology landscape, not only helping to reduce costs, but also to enable an organisation to be more agile.
- Standardization and Consistency: Defining your standards and, more importantly, making these available across the organisation so change teams can work within the agreed standards, helps ensure standardisation of applications and technologies. This in turn can help to reduce complexity, reduce cost and improve efficiency and agility in your organisation.
- Decision Support: One of things we at EAS are always reminding people of is the importance of informed decision making. If you understand where you are and where you want to be then you can understand the changes required to get you to your target, whether that is in support of a strategy or a tactical change. This includes evaluating the impact of decisions on the entire organization and making choices that align with long-term goals. When the decisions are based on subjective opinions and limited facts then they are not optimal. The key is objectivity and as many facts as possible.
- Documentation and Communication: An EA tool can serve as a centralised repository for organisational knowledge, helping to share information and learning to mitigate the risks of knowledge and skills loss – every organisation has ‘knowledge at risk’, i.e. knowledge that is critical but, for example, held in the heads of people who would take that knowledge with them if they left or lost when a process or support is outsourced. Codifying that knowledge reduces organisational risk and an EA tool plays a key role in this – see our latest blog here.
How we think the 2023 Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for EA Tools Can Help
You can access the Complimentary Gartner Report here to know why we are recognised by Gartner.
There are a number of EA tools on the market so how can you work out which is the best fit for you? One way to evaluate EA Tools is to read the Gartner Magic Quadrant for EA Tools which was released recently. A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors.
It includes;
- Market Definition/Description
- Gartner defines the market for Enterprise Architecture Tools as tools that allow organizations to examine both the need for, and the impact of, change.
- Positioning of vendors in the Magic Quadrant
- Vendor Strengths and Cautions
- Evaluation Criteria
- EA Market Overview
- Many vendors in this market have taken advantage of recent developments in generative AI to provide enhanced features that ease the management of data in the repository ad generate recommendations and artifacts. We expect to see continued enhancements of tools in this market through introduction of additional AI/ML functionality as the technology matures.
A bit about us and our recognition by Gartner
As you will see, Enterprise Architecture Solutions (EAS) is one of the vendors evaluated, and we’re delighted to announce that, for the third consecutive year, we are the only Visionary in the report. The Visionaries Quadrant is described by Gartner in the report as “Visionaries in a market are the innovators driving the market forward by responding to emerging, leading-edge customer demands and offering new opportunities to excel.”
The Essential EA Management Tool supports all the examples described above of why an EA Tool is needed, but at a fraction of the price of most other EA tools. As mentioned, our business model is designed to be disruptive and so we are able to offer a fully featured EA Management Tool for an annual subscription of just $19,500, which includes unlimited users and unlimited EA data, so the price is consistent and understood.
John Mayall, Director and Founder states “Our unique business model marks us out from the competition and allows us to deliver excellence at a low, predictable price that cannot be met by other vendors following a more traditional model. In addition, our past life as an EA consultancy means most of our team have been practising architects, which has given us the understanding needed to build an EA Tool that provides value as simply and easily as possible.”
You can access the Complimentary Gartner Report here to know why we are recognised by Gartner.
Once you have had a read, we’d be more than happy to discuss your needs and demo how Essential can support them. Contact us here to find out more.
Official Research Methodology
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools, Andrew Gianni, Andreas Frangou, 20 November 2023
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Enterprise Architecture Solutions Ltd.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.