How Enterprise Architecture Creates Business Value: A Theoretical Model

Despite the growing interest in Enterprise Architecture (EA) over the last decade, many organizations still view EA as an abstract instrument that demands substantial investment, with hard to prove benefits. In fact, some organizations doubt the success of their EA initiatives due to the difficulties in justifying their EA-related expenditure. EA-benefits research often presents implicit perspectives of EA-benefits realization processes and there is no single thorough view of how EA might deliver value to organizations. Thus, this study endeavors to develop an EA-benefits realization process model using an established theoretical foundation. It uses the process theory of “how IT creates business value” to apprehend the focal elements of the formula for turning EA investment into organizational value. The contribution of this study is the development of a conceptual EA-benefits realization process model. The model conveys that EA investment results in an increased organizational performance through the realization of three interconnected processes. It connects and unpacks the EA-benefits realization process going from an early EA investment toward a preferred organizational performance using three processes: the conversion process, the use process, and the competitive process.