Enterprise architecture management for small and medium sized enterprises: a case study and tool support

M. Bernaert () and Dirk Van den Poel

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: Enterprise architecture (EA) is used as a holistic approach to keep things aligned in a company. Some emphasize the use of EA to align IT with the business, others see it broader and use it to also keep the processes aligned with the strategy. Enterprise architecture management (EAM) enables companies to keep up with a rapidly changing business environment. Although a lot of research is being done on EA and EAM, still hardly anything is known about their use in the context of a small and medium sized enterprise (SME). Because of some specific characteristics of SMEs, it is interesting to look how EA and its management can be applied in a SME. In this paper, the authors present an approach for EA and EAM for SMEs, which combines four dimensions to get a holistic overview, while keeping things aligned. The approach is developed with special attention towards the characteristics of SMEs. A case study in a Belgian SME is used to ground and apply the presented approach. With this case study, the authors show how EA can be applied and managed in a SME. A tool is presented which can be used to implement the approach. The tool enables the EA model to be developed, to be kept up-to-date, and to be used to make analyses.

Keywords: Enterprise; architecture; management; Small; and; medium; sized; enterprises; Business; architecture; CHOOSE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 2 pages
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-ent
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:12/789

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