Architecting business and IS/IT strategic alignment for extended enterprises

Abstract

Incorporating information systems and information technology (IS/IT) is badly needed in extended enterprises. For this purpose, the enterprise engineering approach offers important benefits; however there is no complete framework to define and model IS/IT components and their strategic alignment with the business strategy. This paper presents an enterprise architecture framework for extended enterprises which improves not only the strategic alignment process inside each individual company, but also the strategic alignment process for the extended enterprise. The main aim of this paper is to provide a modelling framework from the enterprise engineering approach which includes the components to model the IS/IT strategy and allow the extended enterprise to improve strategic alignment process. A comparative analysis has been done of life- cycle phases, modelling views and the strategic alignment between different enterprise architectures. Next, the required building blocks have been proposed: IS/IT conceptualization, strategic dependencies, alignment heuristics, maturity model and application portfolio (as-is and to-be). This proposal has been applied in the collaborative order management process of a ceramic tile company with its suppliers and consumers.