The MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research developed a capability maturity model that defines four stages of architecture maturity. Each stage involves organisational learning about how to apply IT and business process discipline as strategic capabilities.
As companies move through each stage they can realise benefits rangin from reduced IT operating costs to greater strategic agility.
Stage 1: Business silos
In this stage companies focus IT investments on delivering solutions for local business unit or functional needs and have do not utilise technology standards. The role of IT in this stage is to automate or facilitate specific business processes.
- One off solutions
- Bottom-up. IT led by local business units
- Poor integration with other IT systems
- Poor server utilisation
- Little shared data
Stage 2: Standardised technology
This stage means moving some IT investments from local applications to shared infrastructure. Technology standards are now established intended to increase reliability and decrease the number of technology platforms to manage. Fewer platforms means lower cost (around 15% less) but also less choice, however companies are willing to accept this tradeoff.
- Rationalisation, standardisation, and consolidation of the IT infrastructure
- Achieving a reliable, cost-effective IT infrastructure shared services model
- Focus on quick wins
Stage 3: Optimised core
The next move is from a local view of data and applications to an enterprise view. IT staff eliminate data redundancy by extracting transaction data from individual applications and making it available to all processes. In this stage companies are also standardising business processes and It applications.
- Standardising core business processes
- Local managers and units lose control over discretion over processes and IT
- Consolidating redundant applications into a single global instance of ERP and CRM
- Rationalisation of processes and applications with the objective of standardising processes and consolidating applications.
- Build re-usable data and business process platforms
- Top-down. Business processes and IT investments are made by central IT department
Stage 4: Business modularity
This stage allows strategic agility through customised or reusable modules. The objective is to create reusable modules that business units can join together a standard interface such as web services.
- Move from local flexibility to global flexibility