A Best Practice Configuration is something that many
Software as a Service companies bring to implementations but in my experience getting
clients to adopt them is difficult. Personally I believe this is a byproduct of
the paradigm shifts between old school On Premise products and the new school
Cloud Based solutions. In order to service the greatest number of customers and
implement in the least amount of time some level of standardization must be
achieved and leveraged. This also leads to client pain points when their
internal processes don’t align with vendor best practice, or their EA program is
not well developed.
Having EA guidance when choosing a vendor is a practice most
organizations follow but their continued support through the implementation is
where additional value can be found. EA teams should provide guidance and
governance on project teams, not just take a supplementary role. Waiting for
project team members to ask for EA assistance ignores a common problem: without
EA being fully involved in project activities project team members
unintentionally miss opportunities for EA involvement. Application
implementation often involves several functional teams such as H.R., Accounting,
Compliance and IT and understanding those interactions are critical to the
process improvement that lead to improved Solution Architectures and new
iterations of the Future State Architecture. In my experience functional
departments are the slowest adopters of change and often hold on to a way of
doing things because they are comfortable with them not because they are
actually optimally configured.
EA teams should use implementations to further realize EA
value and adopt vendor best practices when possible. By actively participating
they will make functional departments accurately articulate their needs rather
than accepting the status quo. By challenging them, and then listening, EA
teams will gain a greater understanding of not just what these departments say
they need, but what they actually do.
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