Organisational Analysis

The organisational analysis described here (aimed at developing the plans for strategic development and risk assessment) is to determine the core functioning of the organisation. It is essential to get a clear unambiguous understanding of the key factors that drive the performance of the organisation and to determine what risks may threaten the organisation. To do this an organisation must carefully choose the analysis tools they will use to gather information about their organisation. Companies, while researching and analysing their business architecture, are rediscovering Michael Porter's value chain (Whittle, 2016). To understand the value creation aspect of the organisation, it is necessary to determine the critically significant value activities, together with any causal relations that are evident and where possible the degree of that relation. There is a suggestion that the value stream is a more basic analysis unit than the value chain and that the value chain can comprise several value stream components. The value stream may, therefore, be a better analysis unit to use when developing the value architecture. The business model cannot be called an analysis tool; however, it is a critical review tool for the other analysis activities and an essential communication facility for the organisation.

Value Activities and the Business Model

The business model and the value activities are able to play a significant role in the development of the strategic plan and risk assessment for the organisation. The importance of these concepts and the separate role each needs to play is discussed. The good business model is an important tool for managers to analyse strategic choices and select the strategies they feel appropriate to develop the organisation for future advantage and to set the business into a more effective direction. However, the definitions for a business model cover a range of complexity: from a simple definition covering the customer and product, to a complex definition covering most of the business organisation. The value proposition is examined as a systematic way of examining the activities a firm performs and how they interact. The various value models: from value chain to value net, are reviewed and replaced with the term value architecture to give a broader view of the value concept. An architecture is proposed for defining the structure of the value activities and their inter-relationships which can provide an underpinning of information for the business model. This would remove many complexities from the model and make the model easier to review, validate and implement.

Business Architecture

A well-presented business architecture will provide a holistic view of the enterprise. This will best enable management to see the critical structures and how they work together to determine what improvements can be made and what risks may exist. This chapter will show how the idea of architectural principles can be used to guide the development of an architectural reference model which can then be used by the planning staff to develop and present the organisational analysis in the form of architectural blueprint of the organisation. An architectural blueprint of the organisation would go a long way to ensuring that all the staff are on the same page by including the strategic plan and risk assessment plan within the business architecture; then it would ensure the development of the organisation would be as effective as possible. TOGAF provide a very detailed definition of ‘Enterprise Architecture' which covers all the topics from the Strategic Plan, Business Architecture to the IT System, but the TOGAF focus is very much on requirements to build the IT system. This book is aimed at the business manager developing the business architecture for organisational improvement, with IT there only as another value adding activity.

Structuring of Information for Understanding

Using well-structured information when describing a complex subject will increase understanding of, and therefore improve memory retention of, the subject material. A good structure conveys additional understanding separate from the information content itself. It is necessary to be aware of the way cue words and text abstracts can prepare the reader for the succeeding ideas. There are a number of alternatives to providing a preview of upcoming material: One is that the abstract should be structured in a very formal way with subheadings and subsections. Another approach requires summaries formatted as numbered list items within the document. Readability is, of course, one of the basic tenets for good documentation and has been a topic of concern in many papers. Gribbons (1992) makes the point that most bodies of knowledge have an inherent structure, and the visual presentation of that information should follow the complexity of the structure and complement it. A number of authors propose the idea that more visual documentation will facilitate the management and navigation through complex documentation.

The Right Information

Organisations are becoming increasingly information driven and are rapidly shifting focus to requiring better information for long-term strategic planning. There is a lot of data required to provide this information and a lot of critical thought needed to change the data into useful information. Organisations need to improve the search for the right information that can be used immediately—to take action or make a decision—and this chapter examines the reality of this definition. The availability of effective management information is essential when coping with today's increasing organisation complexity. For the information system to be designed correctly in order to collect the requisite data and to be able to provide the necessary information, it is essential for the information system developers to know what information is required for managers and staff to run the organisation at all three levels of management: operational, tactical, and strategic. The information of course is not useful unless it is being communicated and it particularly needs to be communicated to the person that needs it. The information requirements for management planning should form part of the essential strategic plan documentation.