Most companies either already pursuing or planning to pursue digital transformation recognize the value Enterprise Architecture (or EA) as a discipline delivers. In many of these companies, EA is well established as an organization and offers well-defined processes, principles, and guidelines to facilitate the journey of digital transformation. However, in order to be successful in delivering the business values from its digital transformation, an enterprise must build and establish a nimble (lean) and flexible (agile) EA discipline or program.

There are a number of reasons one can think of behind using or leveraging a nimble and flexible EA. The ability to embrace the digital transformation in a consistent, efficient, and effective way within a finite duration is the first one worth mentioning. Digital transformation is a change that impacts not only the enterprise involved – it impacts the entire ecosystem an enterprise is part of and that makes this ability so important. EA formalizes and cultivates the technology standards, tools and techniques relevant to executing digital transformation initiatives. Incorporating the industry standard technology, tools, and techniques, an enterprise can optimize the experience its customers and end-users avail and ultimately enhance its operational excellence. In this regard, the value of data analytics (specifically big data analytics) is paramount to assess the behavior of the customers or users accessing the digital assets of a company. Big data analytics facilitates not only the behavioral analysis but also predictive decision making in digital transformation. In this context, cloud based big data analytics play a vital role for many digital transformation initiatives.

For a national healthcare delivery services provider, both EA and big data analytics play a significant role in executing its digital transformation. The EA organization or practice has established a holistic and yet pragmatic approach to enable its leaders and employees as well as partners to perform various phases of digital transformation in short sprints and deliver tangible values while integrating the existing and new digital assets. This company has recently launched a new pilot service for 1000 local diabetes and hypertension patients to determine their blood sugar and blood pressure levels periodically using a set of wearable IoT medical devices (sensors) and mobile apps. The intention is to determine the behavioral changes of the patients and help them with self-management advice or guidance. The use of a commercial analytics tool has been expediting the successful completion of this initiative.

I strongly believe that EA and analytics jointly empower the professionals involved in the digital transformation initiatives and enable enterprises to reap quantifiable benefits in an effective way.

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