Enterprise

architecture
(EA) success kit
Everything you need to
drive impact with EA
Table of contents

3 Chapter 1: Why you need enterprise

architecture management

6 Chapter 2: Starting off on the right

foot

11 Chapter 3: Building the foundation

for successful enterprise architecture
management

17 Chapter 4: Driving impact with

common EA use cases

2 | 30
 Chapter 1
Why you need enterprise architecture management

3 | 30
Describing the business value of enterprise
architecture management (EAM) is easy. An
effective EAM program helps you address, and
even prevent, the following:

• Security breaches and service breakdowns due to outdated

systems and applications you may not have been aware of

• Falling afoul of regulators because you can’t map data

flows, track data lineage, or report accurately on who has
access to data

• Countless delays when you try to modernize a highly

integrated system, such as an ERP, because you don’t
understand how it interacts with the rest of your IT landscape

• Overspending on IT through the management and

maintenance of multiple redundant systems

You can avoid these outcomes by building a centralized

repository of application information that's accessible to
everyone across your organization. When housed in a single,
4 | 30
dedicated tool, such a repository can provide visibility into Soon, though, you run into the problems outlined above.
your systems and their interdependencies. What’s more, it can You can’t keep track of everything. You can’t account for
support cross-functional collaboration while serving as an everything. Mergers and acquisitions only make things
engine for ongoing technology transformation. worse, because now you have to integrate two different
If it's so easy to explain the business value of EA, then why enterprise architectures, both of which have not been
do some companies still not have an EA function? thoughtfully managed.

The fact of the matter is, when you're just starting out as a The organic approach to EA eventually becomes
business, you really don’t have to. You are focused on unsustainable. In fact, it can become a real liability, making
meeting a common customer need or delivering a certain innovation impossible and disrupting business as usual.
product. You may need some specialized technology to What you need is an intentional approach. What you need
do what you intend to, but the technology you use to run is enterprise architecture management.
your business is essentially a commodity. You focus on
price and functionality, and that's good enough. An effective EAM program can help you
address:
Eventually, you have systems for finance, HR, marketing
communications, and so on. Data flows between these Security Regulatory
systems. Some of your technology lives in a data center and risks compliance
some runs in the cloud. You have an enterprise architecture, in
fact, but it’s one you have grown organically. As the need
arose, you bought new tools and connected them to Modernization IT
delays overspending
everything else as quickly as possible.

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 Chapter 2
Starting off on the right foot

6 | 30
Before walking through the basics of setting up a
successful EA practice, there are a few best
practices to keep in mind. As you read through
them, you may realize why you have encountered
some of the most common challenges we see.

Step out of the ivory tower

Traditionally, enterprise architecture management has felt like
an academic exercise. The focus fell on diagramming and
modeling IT systems. What’s worse, many viewed the
discipline as a “technology cop,” controlling what people
could and couldn’t do. Enterprise architecture management
can and should be an enabling function, one centered entirely
around collaboration aimed at ensuring the business has the
tools it needs to accomplish its goals.

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 SAP LeanIX meta model
Use a best-practice data model
A data model defines how your dataUnlock EA
is organized, O P I

documented, and defined. It allowsvalue

you tofaster with
both name Strategy Objective Platform Initiative

the SAP LeanIX

and categorize the entities and relationships that make and transformation Predefined subtypes
Idea, Program, Project, Epic

up your enterprise architecture. meta model

Examples Examples Examples
Increase direct-to-consumer Digital platform for B2B Implement customer-facing
sales by 20% commerce application

The SAP LeanIX meta model offers an example of

The SAP LeanIX meta model covers all layers
of enterprise architecture (EA). It empowers
O B B
how a data model is structured. This model
businesses to keep theiruses
data structured
across four key dimensions for end-to-end Business Organization Business Business Context
entities such as Data Object, Application, andincluding strategy
business transformations, architecture Predefined subtypes
Business Unit, Region, Legal
Capability
Predefined subtypes
Process, Value Stream,
and transformation, business architecture,
Interface to capture informationapplication
aboutandyour
Entity, Team, Customer Customer Journey, Product

data architecture, and Examples

Examples
Customer Relationship, Examples

technical architecture. U.S., Germany, France Order to Cash

application and data architecture. It uses entities

Enterprise Support

like Provider, IT Component, and Tech Category to

With a pre-defined meta model,
organizations can unlock fast time to value,
describe your technical architecture, and
quickly turning dataso on. insight into
into insight, D A I
action, and action into results.
Application and Data Object Application Interface
data architecture Predefined subtypes

Trying to create a model closely replicating all the Examples

Logical Interface, API

Examples

particularities of your business isTake

time consuming
Examples Salesforce, Salesforce to
Customer, Prospect, Employee SAP SuccessFactors solutions SAP SucessFactors Interface
a deeper dive into the
and ultimately not worth the effort. Enterprise
SAP LeanIX meta model, get familiar
with clear modeling guidelines, and
architecture management as a discipline
learn about all has beendetails!
the essential P I T

around long enough to have created best-practice Technical Provider IT Component Tech Category
Learn more
models. Take advantage of these to get started as architecture Predefined subtypes
SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, Hardware,
Software, Services

quickly as possible. Examples

AWS, Microsoft
Examples
EC2 Virtual Server, .NET
Examples
Service, Database

8 | 30
Set clear goals for your program
Clarify what you want your EAM program to achieve right out
of the gate (for example, enable innovation, promote
organizational agility, or control IT costs). This will help you
convince internal stakeholders to support the project. More
practically, your goals will serve as a guide when it comes to
deciding exactly what type of application and IT data you
need to collect.

Be here now
Enterprise architects want to design things. And they should!
But any path to the future starts right here in the present.

Everything begins with your current, "as-is" architecture.

Getting a comprehensive handle on that alone will deliver
measurable results.

To be clear, envisioning and designing your target architecture

is incredibly valuable. At the same time, mapping your as-is
state allows your EA practice to have immediate impact by
enabling application rationalization and cost optimization
efforts. It will also provide a reliable starting point as you
design the roadmap to your architecture’s future state.
9 | 30
Choose the right tool The right tool will also feature plenty of out-of-the-box
One reason that EAM efforts often fail to gain traction is that integrations you can use to import critical data from other
EAs and their partners try to build their own tools. Cobbled enterprise tools (CMDB, BPM, etc.)
together from Excel, PowerPoint, and any other solutions at
hand, these tools inevitably fall short. The need to manually Finally, remember your enterprise architecture impacts
update spreadsheets means that data quickly becomes everybody and the work they do. For this reason, the tool
unreliable. And using that data to diagram your estate is either you choose should support easy collaboration across the
out of the question or exceedingly tedious. enterprise.

Other organizations choose a traditional EA tool, of which

there are many. While this is marginally better than the DIY
approach, traditional tools often require expensive custom-
ization and take months to stand up. Customization, however,
prolongs your time to value and makes it difficult to change
Tool checklist:
when the business demands it.
Best-practice data model
Choosing the right tool will enable you to show results
as quickly as possible. A ready-made data model, Fast time to value
allowing, but not requiring, customization is a good start.
It allows you to get to work creating your application Out-of-the-box integrations
inventory, for example, instead of figuring out how you
want to structure it. Highly collaborative

10 | 30
 Chapter 3
Building the foundation for successful enterprise
architecture management

11 | 30
A strong EA practice requires a solid foundation so you can more quickly tackle the challenges facing
your organization. Let's explore the three steps to building a successful EA practice.

Step 1: Map your business capabilities

While EA is most often associated with technology, managing Asset Management Customer Service Enterprise Strategy Finance Human Resources Marketing R&D

your enterprise architecture starts with a focus on your Asset Information

Management

Asset Data and Information

Customer Service and Support

Inquiry Management
Business Process Management

Business Process Analytics and Mining

Accounting and
Financial Close

Asset Accounting
HR Administration

Concurrent Employment Management

Marketing Execution

Audience Segmentation
Produc
Manag

Product

business strategy.
Management Omnichannel Customer Engagement Business Process Governance Employee Administration Digital Asset Management
Financial Master Data Management
Service
Asset Information Standards Definition Service Level Management Business Process Modeling Global Assignment Management Lead Management
General Ledger Accounting
Specific
Service Request Management Business Process Optimization Marketing Campaign Management
Group Financial Closing
Asset Lifecycle Delivery HR Strategy and Planning Marketing Collaboration
Revenue and Cost Recognition Produc
Asset Commissioning Customer Service Strategy Corporate Operations Culture and Change Management Manag
and Planning Management
Asset Decommissioning Employee and Labor Relations Marketing Strategy and Market R

The average company uses 976 different applications,

Customer Service Planning Customer Order Central Operations Financial Planning Management Planning
Asset Management Resource Planning and Forecasting and Analysis Product
Finance Central Operations HR Strategy Planning Marketing Analytics
Customer Service Strategy
Maintenance Execution Budgetary Accounting
Management Product
HR Central Operations Marketing Planning and Budgeting

according to a report issued by Mulesoft and Deloitte. For

Financial Analytics Product
Payroll and Reimbursement
R&D Central Operations Marketing Strategy Management Manage
Asset Management Strategy Financial Planning
and Planning Payroll Management
Shared Services Enablement

larger companies, the number can run into the thousands.

Asset Investment Management Reimbursement Management Price and Promotion Produc
Sourcing and Procurement
Central Operations Payables and Receivables Management Manag
Asset Strategy Management Management
Promotion Planning Bill of M
Operations and Maintenance Payables Financing Talent Acquisition
Expenditure Planning Enterprise Strategy Bill of Se

Is that too many? Not enough? Are they the right ones?
Sales Price Planning and Definition
and Planning Payment Processing Recruiting

Business Information Strategy Talent Sourcing

Asset Review and Receivables Financing
Definition Produc
Risk Management Requir
Workforce Onboarding

The only way to judge is to look at the business

Corporate Brand Strategy
Asset Performance Analysis Management Cross-Po
Treasury Management Manage
Asset Review and Audit Enterprise Architecture Management
Cash and Liquidity Management Talent Management
Require
IT Strategy Definition

capabilities these applications need to support.

Asset Risk Assessment Career Development
Commodity Risk Management
Operating Model Definition
Debt and Investment Management Employee Performance Management Produc
Organization Strategy and Design
Manag
Financial Risk Management Skills and Competencies Management
Complia
Financial Service Provider
Management Product
Complia
Payment Centralization

Business capability maps show the capabilities that are Treasury Analytics

Treasury Governance
and Compliance Management

essential for your business to operate. Having this

information at hand in an intuitive visual format gives you
a starting point for mapping your applications to business
capabilities. It’s the fastest way to identify gaps,
inefficiencies, and redundancies in your application An example of a best-practice business
portfolio. capability map
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There are a number of resources that can help you quickly Business capabilities vs. business processes
create your own business capability map. "Business capabilities and business processes offer different
Here is the definitive guide from SAP LeanIX. perspectives on the same reality: the 'what' and the 'how'.
Take “available-to-promise” as an example. This capability
describes the capacity or ability to realize an outcome:
responding to a customer inquiry with a confirmed quantity
of product that can be delivered at a certain place and time.

The process describes which individual tasks need to be

completed, by whom, and in which sequence, to generate this
response: The order manager receives a request from a
customer, checks the stock, then the local production
forecast, then checks other orders with higher priority, then
the requested delivery location and calculates the days
forward, etc. There might be even more steps to take.

The capability is rather abstract and conceptual. For a given

business model, it is also a concept that does not change
over time. The business process, on the other hand, can
change even within the same business model as the business
Click to download
evolves."

Read more here.

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Step 2: Build your application inventory While you might be tempted to use surveys to identify
Your business capability map provides one essential corner- SaaS in your organization, this won’t give you the whole
stone of your EA practice. Your inventory of architectural data picture. The better way is to rely on an EA tool capable of
provides the other. As mentioned above, your data model automatically discovering SaaS applications, through
should guide the creation of this inventory by defining your integration with enterprise systems like SSO, for example.
“architectural objects” (applications, interfaces, business
capabilities, etc.). Step 3: Ensure the completeness and quality of your
data
Creating an inventory of your applications is the most Every application record in your inventory should include
common starting point here. As it turns out, you probably relevant, useful data about that application. This data can
already have some inventory of your applications. It may include the business capability it supports, the business
be a list maintained in Excel or in a CMDB, or in some other processes it is part of, the application’s user group, and the
tool focused on IT management. What matters is getting business owner of the application, among other things.
this data out of its various silos and into your EA tool. SAP
LeanIX, for example, allows you to import data using Excel The precise data you need will be determined by the data
spreadsheets built on a standardized template or using model you use. Some of this information may be in your
the REST API. You can also input data manually. existing records, but you will most likely need to augment it
with insights from your users. This is where surveys can help.
SaaS applications pose a special challenge when building With SAP LeanIX, you can routinely send comprehensive
your inventory for the simple reason that SaaS can often surveys to team leaders and application owners. You can also
be purchased without involving IT. While decentralized enlist users to review and validate the data in your application
purchasing may increase agility and reflect a “business-led records.
IT” approach, it also means that there is no easy way to
know exactly what SaaS applications you have. 14 | 30
Application
records
in your
inventory
should
include
relevant,
useful data.

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 Chapter 4
Driving impact with common EA use cases

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By this stage, you have mapped your business
capabilities, built your inventory, and ensured the
completeness and accuracy of your data. Now,
with a solid foundation of information and
visibility, you can start driving impact. In the
following section, we'll delve into the EA use
cases that deliver the most value and fastest ROI.

Application rationalization
The process of application rationalization boils down to one
basic question: Does it make sense that we have the specific
applications we have?

The reason this question is important goes back to

what we said above. Generally, companies grow their
enterprise architecture and application portfolios
organically. There comes a time, however, when you realize
that you are maintaining and managing applications you no
longer need or that no longer fit your business needs. That’s
when it’s time to rationalize.

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Our research has shown that only 15% of organizations How SAP LeanIX helps
regularly rationalize their application portfolios. That’s With an inventory of applications that have been
unfortunate because application rationalization delivers a mapped to business capabilities in SAP LeanIX, you
business value in the form of cost savings, efficiency gains, are already on your way.
increased productivity, and improved security.
From there, you can use the SAP LeanIX
application portfolio report to quickly scope
applications required for assessment. What SAP
LeanIX specifically enables you to do is rank
applications based on their functional fit (do they
do what the business needs?) and technical fit (are
they the best tools for your specific IT
environment?).

You can use this information to make data-driven

decisions about next steps using the Gartner TIME
(tolerate, invest, migrate, eliminate) framework.

By providing a way to think through next steps –

Do we live with this application? Replace it? Move
it to the cloud? Retire it? – this framework has
become the industry standard for planning and
executing an application rationalization process.
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Our expert guide
explains how you
can use SAP
LeanIX to apply
the TIME
framework for
application
rationalization.

Click to download

19 | 30
Industry: Manufacturing and retail / Headquarters: New York, U.S. / Employees: 62,000

Estée Lauder "SAP LeanIX has been instrumental in

helping us organize all of the information
Estée Lauder is one of the world's leading cosmetics
companies. It has over 60,000 employees across the
we need for continuous application
world, several different brands, and a sprawling portfolio optimization. All of our strategic
portfolio of over 200 applications. goals from the board on down are put into
SAP LeanIX and mapped to specific
Rationalizing such a portfolio across so many
brands, regions and teams is a monumental projects."
endeavor. That's why Estee Lauder uses SAP
LeanIX to support regular application Dawit Lessanu, Executive Director of Enterprise Architecture,
rationalization initiatives.
Estée Lauder

This in-depth success story reveals how the

company leveraged SAP LeanIX to develop an
eight-step methodology for application portfolio
optimization, a process which includes optimizing
costs, driving global standards for mission-critical
apps, and securing stakeholder buy-in.

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Technology obsolescence risk management updated or, in some cases, even supported by the vendor.
According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Without regular updates or support, legacy technology
Agency (CISA), the number-one risk to critical infrastructure is can experience failures and outages that halt business
the use of unsupported or end-of-life software. operations. This can be very expensive and, what’s worse,
degrade the customer experience.
And dealing with the fallout from a security breach can
be extremely difficult. In addition to bad publicity and Most importantly, you often can’t apply modern security
reputational damage, the average cost of security incident best practices – multi-factor authentication, singlesign on,
mitigation has reached an all-time high of US$4.35 million. role-based access, etc. – to outdated solutions. These
solutions also frequently lack sufficient audit trails or
Despite these facts, many organizations still run mission- encryption methods. They also often don’t offer the kind
critical business processes on legacy systems. of real-time security monitoring needed to detect and
A 2021 survey of 211 C-level decision makers, conducted resolve security breaches.
by Tata Consultancy and AWS, revealed that over 66% of
organizations used legacy applications for core
operations, and over 60% used them for customer-facing
functions. This is disconcerting, as there are a number of
drawbacks and risks to using outdated technology.

Legacy systems run slower and need more attention from

administrators. Time and resources are spent simply trying
to get them to operate properly, which ultimately impacts
the bottom line. Also, these systems are often not regularly
21 | 30
How SAP LeanIX helps SAP LeanIX created a Lifecycle Catalog within the
Technology risk management is a broad, complex product to serve as a reliable source of lifecycle
topic that cannot be solved by manual data data on a broad range of technologies. As a
maintenance — no matter how skilled your team is. continuously updated repository of IT
With the help of SAP LeanIX, EAs can quickly source component lifecycle information lifecycle
current product information across the organization’s catalog enables users to identify technology
entire IT architecture. This information is essential for obsolescence risks for their hardware and
assessing application portfolio risk, as well as for software and to make better upgrade decisions.
planning, managing, and retiring technology
components in a strategic way. SAP LeanIX combines all critical information
about every technology object in a single source
of truth. SAP LeanIX also provides smart
matching algorithms to cleanse existing data
sets, enabling you to jumpstart the process of
identifying obsolete technology. Custom reports
help you highlight applications that are outdated
or risky and visualize affected dataflows.

22 | 30
 ?
10 key obsolescence risk management questions
SAP LeanIX answers

1. D oes the app need tech upgrades to ensure 6. Is the system prone to incidents?
ongoing support for business operations?

7. How many users would be affected by a

2. What is the lifecycle of this application? potential outage?

3. What are the applications’ response times? 8. W

 hat impact would an application outage
have on revenues?

4. A re response times good or bad compared

to other applications? 9. Are we meeting regulatory or compliance
requirements?

5. D id the application have more or fewer

outages year-over-year? 10. Is the technology risk stagnating business
growth?

23 | 30
Application modernization and ERP transformation
Application modernization can take many forms, from
replacing applications with more modern solutions to
adopting more flexible deployment models like the cloud.
As you may have guessed, the applications you put in the
“invest” and “migrate” categories of the TIME framework are
the top candidates for modernization.

Modernizing your applications is usually more complex

than simply swapping out one application for another.
Frankly, the process of modernizing a critical business
system, such as an ERP, involves so many stakeholders
and related systems that it can accurately be called a
business transformation.

24 | 30
Getting an ERP transformation right calls for:

Aligning IT, business, and Getting the buy-in you need Understanding and
project teams and for important decisions from mapping all
maintaining that alignment company leadership interconnections and
throughout the duration of dependencies between IT
the project components

Designing your target Creating an actionable road

architecture map to your future state

Comprehensive visibility into your IT landscape is the prerequisite for all this, and exactly what an
effective EA practice gives you.

25 | 30
How SAP LeanIX helps SAP LeanIX provides predefined transformation
SAP LeanIX can serve as your single source of truth for templates to simplify and streamline the planning
application modernization projects, including ERP of your transformation. With all your EA data
transformations. With intuitive visualizations and reports, aggregated in one system, you can use SAP LeanIX to
SAP LeanIX enables near-seamless communication and map your current state, envision and design your
collaboration in a holistic way. It gives you the data, tools, target state, and create an actionable transformation
and collaboration capabilities you need to align IT, roadmap to get you there. Throughout the transforma-
business, and project teams and make fast, data-driven tion, SAP LeanIX enables you to track progress and
decisions to keep your transformation on track. dynamically adapt your roadmap to keep up with
your evolving, “as-is” architecture. This allows you to
maintain organizational focus while staying on
schedule and on budget.

Even after your modernization project is complete,

you will still need to track its impact on your
enterprise and identify ongoing optimization
opportunities. As your technology transformation
platform, SAP LeanIX facilitates the process from
start to finish, and into the future.

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To explore how EAM
can overcome the biggest
hurdles of ERP
transformation, read this
in-depth white paper.

Click to download

27 | 30
Industry: Retail / Headquarters: UK / Employees: 25,000+

Travis Perkins “We had used diagramming tools for process

modeling in the past, which creates a nice
British home improvement retailer Travis Perkins
chose SAP LeanIX to guide their ambitious IT
picture, but it’s just a picture. We wanted a
modernization project, which included an ERP model with the data underpinning it –
transformation. The close integration of SAP LeanIX telling us, for example, who owned what
and SAP Signavio solutions gave Travis Perkins a
applications – so we could do some proper
unified view of their IT and process landscapes and
allowed them to easily supplement process data with analysis… It’s hard to move to a better
enterprise architecture data. As a result, everyone operating model if you don’t know what you’re
could quickly understand not only which applications actually doing or how things work today.”
were used in which process, but also who owned and
used these applications.
Matt Webb, Head of Business Process Improvement, Travis Perkins
Learn how SAP LeanIX played a key role in Travis
Perkins’ ERP transformation, and why the company
can now execute future transformations in a
consistent, standardized way.

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Start driving impact with SAP LeanIX
Business transformation today requires technology and your business goals.
transformation. Unfortunately, too many companies lack basic
insight into their technology landscape. This means, first, that Mapping dependencies and data flows between applications
they can’t fully account for the technology they own. Second, allows you to ensure security and regulatory compliance. It
it means that they don’t understand how that technology also allows you to plan and prioritize any changes you want to
supports the business capabilities they need today or make to your IT landscape.
emerging capabilities they will need tomorrow.
Finally, with a single source of truth covering your entire IT
What’s more, they struggle to plan and execute on practical landscape, you can inform a wide range of decisions, from the
road maps that will get them to their target landscape without optimization of customer journeys to the allocation of
breaking anything. resources for strategic innovation initiatives.

A robust enterprise architecture practice solves these Because we believe in the power of EA to drive
problems. By creating a data-rich IT repository and mapping transformation and deliver measurable business impact, we
that repository to business capabilities, your EA practice can designed an EA tool that is easy to implement, easy to use,
assess the alignment between your technology investment and easy to scale.

See for yourself what SAP LeanIX

can do for your organization!
Schedule a personalized demo
with our expert team today
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THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLICIT.

SAP LeanIX is a market leader for enterprise architecture management (EAM), driving the modernization of IT landscapes and continuous business
transformation. Its software-as-a-service solutions empower organizations to create transparency, enabling them to visualize, assess and manage the
transition towards their target IT architecture. By offering a data-driven and automated approach enhanced with AI, SAP LeanIX helps organizations
make sound decisions and collaborate more effectively. SAP LeanIX serves over 1,000 companies globally across various industries, including more than
10% of the Fortune 500 and half of the German DAX 40. Headquartered in Bonn, Germany, SAP LeanIX has a strong international presence with offices in
Boston (USA), London (UK), Paris (France), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Ljubljana (Slovenia). Founded in 2012, the company was acquired by SAP in
November 2023. For more information, visit www.leanix.net.

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2024