I bumped into a friend a few years ago, who was between jobs

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He took a gig with a utility company to audit their network diagrams. He walked the streets and marked bits on diagrams as he found discrepancies. Those diagrams captured key elements that delivered services to the customers’ home. They were the backbone of the “Dial before you dig” service that protected the assets of the utility company, prevented service disruptions to residents and facilitated construction projects to steam ahead.

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What if, your business has something that captured the essence of it from a value creation perspective? You might think you do, because you’ve seen stacks of process diagrams, work instructions, IT network diagrams, IT applications diagrams, IT information diagrams, journey maps and so on. Indeed, they are immensely useful, they provide certain views about your business. Much like a drawing of a plumbing system gives a view that brings water into your house and takes waste out. It is of limited use when you’re rewiring your house.

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Do you have something that lets you see across business units and organisational boundaries and help in upgrading value creation? Do you know the purpose of some front-of-house interactions, the information they need and generate, tools they rely on, regulations they are subject to, flexibility and safeguards in place to help your employees provide great service while protecting vulnerable customers and your business interests?

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That “something” is your business architecture. It lets you view your business from a value creation perspective, see past its complexity and focus on value creation which is the objective of the strategy. It gives transparency to help you identify weaknesses that hamstring strategy execution. Activities that do not create value for customers, capabilities that need investment, operating model misalignments, misdirected change investments and many more.

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"Your business architecture gives meaning to process diagrams, IT network diagrams, IT applications diagrams, IT information architecture diagrams and journey maps because it links them to the strategy"

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With business architecture, your business can have its own version of ‘dial before you dig’ that protects your assets, prevents service disruptions and facilitates projects to steam ahead.

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What if, your business architecture is complete and shared? Imagine what it would do to enterprise-wide root-cause analyses. Imagine how it would do to the quality of business solutions. Imagine the savings from stopping non-value activities and wasteful projects.

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Make sure your business architects build it well and teach you to get the most of it – it’s an asset that rewards generously. Don’t forget, you need someone like my friend to “walk” around your business and keep your business architecture well maintained!

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• The Anonymous Architect