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G00248517

How to Get Business Value From Enterprise

Architecture Consultants
Published: 18 April 2013

Analyst(s): Marcus Blosch, Julie Short

Realizing the benefits of an EA consultant engagement requires

understanding the desired outcomes and creating a successful working
relationship. Enterprise architects must follow this five-step process to
derive to most business value from these partnerships.

Analysis
Leading enterprises are refocusing their enterprise architecture (EA) efforts to deliver business
outcomes. To do this, EA efforts begin with an understanding of the business outcomes to deliver,
while using business direction and strategy as a gauge to determine their effectiveness in moving
the organization forward toward its future. Although many organizations aspire to business-
outcome-driven EA, many find making the transition to focus on delivering outcomes and working
with business executives difficult, rather than just doing EA in the traditional, self-centric way. Many
organizations look to EA consultants to help them focus in on business outcomes and augment
their own resources with specific skills.

Used effectively, EA consultants can deliver significant benefits; many have valuable skills and
experience that can be brought to bear (see "Global Profile of Enterprise Architecture Use of and
Spending on EA Consultancies"). However, getting business value from an EA consultant requires
preparing, knowing what you are looking for from the engagement and creating a successful
working relationship with the EA consultant (see "Seven Best Practices for Building an Enterprise
Architecture Consulting Relationship That Adds Long-Term Value").

Gartner defines the five steps to gain business value along the EA consulting life cycle and
highlights the key pieces of research that enterprise architects should review to benefit from a
consulting engagement.

Step 1: Preparing
Before beginning, it is important to set the potential consulting engagement against the business
outcomes that your organization is trying to drive. The first step is to define a business outcome
statement for your EA effort. This step is vital, and must be completed to drive the efforts of any EA
initiative.

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A business outcome statement consists of the following:

■ Statement of business direction

■ Statement of disruptive trends
■ Business and IT executive concerns
■ Target business outcomes
■ Model of future business state

Desired business outcomes can be driven by a number of factors. Strategy or any change of
business direction often drives business outcomes. These can be short or long term, or even
tactical in nature, depending on the organization. In any case, it is important for enterprise
architects to take their lead from business managers and not become too narrow or dogmatic about
this aspect of strategy or business direction. The business determines the outcomes it desires, not
the enterprise architects. What is most important to enterprise architects is to identify the targeted
business outcomes and deliver them.

Business outcomes must meet these five criteria:

■ Realistic and achievable within the capabilities and credibility of the EA team
■ Few in number to enable a focus on delivery
■ Expressed in business terms
■ Indicative of the benefits to be received and who will receive them
■ Can be assessed and measured, indicating the extent of improvement or target level of
performance

Defining the business outcome statement is the first step in any EA effort and is vital for directing
any EA consulting engagement. It is also helpful to consider the potential consulting engagement
from the perspective of your EA program maturity. You may also be looking to the EA consulting
engagement to help evolve your maturity — for example, you might ask your consultant, "Help us
implement a communication or business relationship management strategy that is effective for
including these specific stakeholders in future EA efforts." You can use the ITScore for Enterprise
Architecture to help you assess where you are and to identify the elements you would like to build
(see "ITScore Overview for Enterprise Architecture").

A maturity perspective also helps focus attention on knowledge transfer. In most cases, it is
desirable for the EA team to develop as a result of the engagement — developing new skills, having
a better understanding of a business area and so forth. The EA consultant should transfer the
knowledge gained during the engagement to the EA team and help build any new skills needed.
Knowledge transfer should always be built into the engagement.

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Step 2: Framing an RFP

The RFP provides a clear background to your organization, its goals and objectives, and the
business outcome it is trying to drive. It invites the EA consultant to propose a solution based on his
or her skills and experience. The process of constructing the RFP often leads to a clearer
understanding of the selection criteria for a consultancy. Moreover, you must be open-minded to
the solution the EA consultant suggests and use that as a basis for further discussion through the
evaluation process (see "RFP Guide and Template for Business-Outcome-Driven EA Consulting").

When framing an RFP, it's always a good idea to phase the work, where possible. This will give you
a chance to end the engagement if the relationship isn't working or to rescope the next phase if you
find that it would provide longer-term value to your organization. This also provides the EA
consultant with an incentive to give you a better deal on rates and to keep you happier.

Step 3: Selecting an EA Consultant

At this stage, a little research is required to narrow down the potential consultants. Consider the
following points:

■ The nature of the business outcomes you're trying to drive — For example, you may be
focused on building a new customer experience, cost cutting or implementing a particular set of
technologies. You would be looking for consultancies with specialties in those areas.
■ Your industry — Often, there are particular practices, regulatory requirements, business
processes and so on that require specific knowledge and experience.
■ Your organization — You may have a particular technology base or organizational model, for
example, that need to be considered.
■ The existing strong relationships with consulting firms used by your organization — If
you've used a particular EA consulting firm in the past, use that experience to decide if you
want to work with it again. For example, was the engagement a success? Did you have a good
working relationship with the EA consultant? Did the consultant bring new, useful ideas and
approaches forward?

Gartner can provide guidance on who may be a suitable EA consultant to consider (see "Top 10 EA
Consultancies You Want to Meet"). Boutique consulting organizations that specialize in EA are often
better positioned for these kinds of engagements. The challenge with consulting organizations from
large system integrators is that they are often looking for (and positioning the EA toward) the follow-
on projects that they have the capability to deliver. A different challenge from vendor organizations
is that they view an EA engagement, which is often delivered for free, as a presales activity to
understand the client's needs for their product.

Many companies have clear guidelines and requirements on how to tender for external service
providers, with this process often managed through the purchasing department. Be sure to review
the requirements and follow your process as needed.

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Once that process is completed, the RFP can be sent out to the candidate EA consultancies. From
our inquiries with clients, we find that not all candidate EA consultancies will reply (an EA
consultancy opting not to bid is a good thing, since they are, most likely, not a good fit for the
engagement). Of those that do reply, some responses may not be serious, meaning that the
consultant put no effort into preparing a proposal that matches your RFP, delivering instead some
standard slides. Have a sufficient number of candidates to ensure that there are enough serious
candidates to consider.

The vendor selection process has five key steps:

■ There must be a clear articulation of the consultancy selection criteria and agreement among
key decision makers.
■ An initial review is conducted, with submissions reviewed and the most promising called in for
the internal presentation stage (see "Toolkit: EA Consultancy Assessment").
■ The vendor does an on-site presentation of its proposal. It's also helpful to match organizational
cultures — yours and the prospective EA consultant — to ensure that you can work together
(see "Toolkit: Assess Your Organizational Culture for a Successful EA").
■ The winning bid is selected, with an offer extended.
■ Contract negotiation begins. It is important to understand the flexibility of the consultancy to
negotiate the professional fees, percentage of standard and any performance-based
components.

Step 4: Running the Engagement

With the EA consultant selected, the engagement can proceed to deliver the solution for which you
have tendered. There are a set of best practices that can help you succeed in this step (see
"Remaining in the Driver's Seat: How to Use Consultancies in Enterprise Architecture Efforts"). In
essence, it involves being focused on the outcomes you set out to achieve, remaining "in the
driver's seat" and in control of the engagement, and developing a good working relationship with
the EA consultant (see "Seven Best Practices for Building an Enterprise Architecture Consultant
Relationship That Adds Long-Term Value").

Step 5: Evolving the EA Practice

If all goes as expected, you now have the new skills and competencies in place, and have realized
the objectives you set out to achieve. The challenge now is to maintain the momentum created by
the consulting engagement, evolve the EA practice in your organization to embed these new skills
and competencies, and continue to deliver value. This step involves continuing to deliver business-
outcome-driven EA as discussed in Gartner research. Continuing to evolve the practice of EA is
essential to the success of your EA practice and for the EA consulting engagement to be seen as a
success.

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Research Highlights
■ "Global Profile of Enterprise Architecture Use of and Spending on EA Consultancies" shows the
results from Gartner's recent EA survey on how organizations are using EA consulting services.
■ "ITScore Overview for Enterprise Architecture" introduces the Gartner maturity model for EA,
which is useful in helping you to decide where to evolve your EA.
■ "Remaining in the Driver's Seat: How to Use Consultancies in Enterprise Architecture Efforts"
provides best-practice guidance on how to set up and maintain a good working relationship
with an EA consultant.
■ "RFP Guide and Template for Business-Outcome-Driven EA Consulting" provides an RFP
template that can be tailored, along with guidance on how to create an RFP.
■ "Toolkit: Assess Your Organizational Culture for a Successful EA" helps identify what your
organizational culture is and the implications for the EA practice.
■ "Toolkit: EA Consultancy Assessment" provides a scoring spreadsheet for assessing the RFPs
of potential EA consultants.
■ "Top 10 EA Consultancies You Want to Meet" identifies the top 10 EA consultants that clients
say they'd like to meet at a Gartner event. It can help you create your starter list for potential
consultants.

Recommended Reading
Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

"Global Profile of Enterprise Architecture Use of and Spending on EA Consultancies"

"ITScore Overview for Enterprise Architecture"

"Remaining in the Driver's Seat: How to Use Consultancies in Enterprise Architecture Efforts"

"RFP Guide and Template for Business-Outcome-Driven EA Consulting"

"Seven Best Practices for Building an Enterprise Architecture Consultant Relationship That Adds
Long-Term Value"

"Toolkit: Assess Your Organizational Culture for a Successful EA"

"Toolkit: EA Consultancy Assessment"

"Top 10 EA Consultancies You Want to Meet"

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