ABSTRACT

Developing enterprise systems for various organisations in this world of business transformation is a challenging issue for system developers’ as most business need to adapt to these transformations dynamically and align their processes, information system and technologies to the new requirements. The transformation and alignment requires good strategy and quality architecture. Enterprise architecture (EA) is a coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realization of an enterprise’s organizational structure, business processes, information systems, and IT infrastructure. Recent research indicates the need for EA in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs are currently important drivers of the economy and they struggle with problems related to lack of structure and overview of business processes. The existing EA frameworks are perceived as too complex and, to date, none of the EA approaches are sufficiently adapted to the SME context. This study aims at developing an integrated model for SME systems through the use of enterprise architecture. Prototyping was used for the progressive building of the model. The Object Oriented Analysis and Design Methodology (OOADM) was used to analyze our findings as well as developing the metamodel and information system. The system is implemented using a client/server approach, with a backend database (Microsoft SQL Server) and a frontend Visual Basic (client). The developed integrated model for SMEs is composed of sub-architectures of business, information, information system, infrastructure and resources and governance and security which provided a holistic and systemic vision of EA. The model was applied to an SME in Nigeria to authenticate its applicability and the result shows that the new architecture can successfully help SMEs to standardize their processes, develop integrated information system and streamline their operations. The integrated model was evaluated according to the dimensions essential in EA and the requirements for EA in an SME context and the result shows that EA approach can offer SMEs solutions to typical problems related to a lack of structure, overview, strategic awareness, IT planning, and business-IT alignment.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1. Background of Study

Enterprises globally are undergoing business transformation. In order to take advantage of this transformation and gain competitive advantage, enterprises all over the globe have been reinventing their business models. These business trends have resulted in adoption of innovative technologies and increased use of modern technology to communicate and collaborate. Today‘s market conditions demand better alignment and synchronization of business strategy, processes, and technology. Unfortunately, business and Information Technology (IT) architectures that are supposed to support innovation and competitive advantage are often disconnected, thus severely constraining an organization‘s agility. The successful organization of the future will be an engine of continuous transformation that adjusts to offer solutions to its constituents at a lower cost and faster time-to-market than its competitors (Schekkerman, 2003). This transformation requires an integrated Business and Technology Architecture – Integrated framework that not only dynamically aligns business and technology components and processes within the organization and across its value chain, but also supports the organization for long term, cost-effective growth, manage IT system complexity and scale of change in the business. This transformation will be supported by a single enterprise architecture model called An Integrated Model for Small and Medium Scale Enterprise Systems (AIMES) in which business architecture is related to information and Information Technology architecture.

In the early days of computing, technology simply automated manual processes with greater efficiency. As technology evolved, new innovations enabled new capabilities and processes in the enterprise driven by IT. Gradually, IT changed the business but not necessarily in alignment with the business strategy. This lack of alignment resulted in significant waste of resources and missed opportunities, and placed the organization in a competitive disadvantage in the market. Over the years, IT has evolved from delivering point solutions to a complex, interrelated landscape of applications, interfaces and infrastructure that support the business processes of an organization and the productivity of its people. More recently, this has started to include an architectural view of business

change, so that Business and IT function seamlessly to deliver the goals of the business. Architecture has always played a role in the development of systems. However, until the early to mid 90‘s (Capgemini, 2007), it was almost exclusively used in technical infrastructure, and commonly referred to as Systems Architecture. As applications and systems increased in number and complexity, the need for a clear and consistent view of the complete picture, together with a structured approach to integration, became apparent. Gradually, the term architecture was extended to include all areas involved; initially ranging from technical infrastructure to information systems, and then towards information, processes and business. More recently, the differences between architecture at an Enterprise level and at a Solution (or project) level have become more clearly recognized and defined: Architecture at the Enterprise level is oriented to the overall business, information and systems landscape, whereas at the project or Solutions level, architecture is more focused on a definition of solution direction and high level design (Capgemini, 2007).

Uncontrolled growth of information systems and technology in the late 1990s (often as a result of decentralized decision making) resulted in information and systems landscapes becoming complex, costly and difficult to manage. As a result, responding quickly and efficiently to new business challenges has become increasingly difficult. Changes in the business affect various aspects of operations: operational scenarios, business processes, policies and important business metrics. All these changes, in turn, have an impact on the systems that are used to automate business operations. Often changes in the company‘s technology infrastructure that underpins its business systems are needed to achieve the desired shifts in business model and operations. Managing change of enterprise scale and complexity requires a structured approach that can holistically cover all impacted areas of the business and plan for major changes in business capabilities to achieve strategically relevant outcomes. Architecture is critical to managing this complexity (Pessi, 2010).

The word ―architecture‖ is among the words, which nowadays has been using much in the world of information technology. According to Pessi and Magoulas (1998), the word

―architecture‖ is going to replace the word ―structure‖ in overall terms. Hugoson et al.

(2008) mentioned that since 1970‘s, organizations are spending huge amount of money for building new information systems. Yet there have been some obstacles in that respect which are:

1. The fast growing amount of systems which in most cases are integrated in ad hoc manner have been expected to increase the cost and complexity of information systems.
   1. Organizations were finding it more and more difficult to keep these information systems in alignment with business needs.
   1. The role of information systems has changed during this time, from automation of routine administrative tasks to a strategic and competitive weapon and the nature of applications has evolved dramatically, from the simple batch systems of the 1960s to today‘s networked distributed apps, which are capable of handling much higher transaction volumes.
   1. Enterprises have not only demanded more applications but, increasingly, faster time to market and responsiveness as well as greater agility and flexibility — often to support dynamic business evolution where requirements are not as well defined as previously. In other words, business has demanded that IT get off the critical path of business change and evolution.
   1. To support and enable new kinds of applications on far more complex hardware configurations, middleware has grown from almost nothing to today‘s high- performance, high-capability middleware products.

In providing solution to these obstacles, a new field of research was born that soon become known as Enterprise Architecture. Enterprise architecture is defined as the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating, and improving the key requirements, principles, and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution (INCOSE, 2005). During these developments in the field of Enterprise Architecture, some frameworks were created like Zachman, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), and Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF). The expressed reason for having Enterprise Architecture is that it provides blueprints for organization and delivers an approach with a set of design principles, methods and models that can be used to design and realize the

structure of an organization on enterprise level. Enterprise architecture supplies to people at all organizational level an explicit, common, and meaningful structural frame of reference. Furthermore, it allows an understanding of important facts such as:

• What the Enterprise does;
• When, where, how and why it does that; (iii)What it uses to do it.

In general view and regarding modern organizations, Magoulas et al. (2011) mentioned that having enterprise architecture as a blue print is not just limited to improve competiveness, but also reduces complexity, increases changeability and provide a basis for evaluation.

EA considers an enterprise as a system in which competencies, capabilities, knowledge, and assets are purposefully combined to achieve stakeholder goals. The tangible outcome of this line of reasoning is a blueprint or holistic overview of the enterprise in the form of an integrated collection of models. Hence, architecture can help maintain the essence of the business, while still allowing for optimal flexibility and adaptability (Jonkers et al., 2006).

EA approaches are often experienced as complex, over-engineered, and difficult to implement. Because of the technical detail required for full-scale implementation, EA models tend to become very large, making them more difficult to understand and less effective to reflect on or design enterprises and their supporting systems (Balabko & Wegmann, 2006). Due to their resource poverty, SMEs experience even more difficulties than larger enterprises in employing EA experts or hiring external consultants (Kroon et al., 2012). Yet, as some studies have confirmed, they may encounter several problems if they fail to implement EA (Bidan et al., 2012).

Bernaert et al. (2013) proposed the concept of EA as a good solution to be used for SMEs to solve problems related to a lack of structure and overview. However, EA is still unknown and hardly used in SMEs. A recent exploratory field study by Bernaert et al. (2013) examined 27 SMEs and observed that nearly all of them were missing a clear

overview of their business organization and none of them actually were using enterprise architecture. The study concluded that there is a pressing need to develop an EA approach specifically adapted to the SME context, consisting of a metamodel, a method, and software tool support.

The goal of this research is to design and develop an integrated EA model for the implementation of small and medium scale enterprise system. The value of the current research lies in the fact that, to our knowledge, AIMES is the first effort to actually develop an Integrated EA approach specifically adapted to the SME context. The development of the metamodel was guided by the requirements for EA in an SME context.

1.2              Statement of the Problems

There are three major problems that this research will attempt to resolve in the SME;

1. Complexity of Enterprise Level IT Systems: The challenge to build highly complex IT systems, ensure that those systems meet needs of increasingly business processes and do all this in a manner that allows everything to adapt quickly to changing technologies. Most existing enterprise architecture methodologies evolved in a much simpler era. Thus, while they address some of the traditional problems of system integration, they do not address the much more difficult problem of managing today‘s complexity that arises from changes in business and technology. Organizations were spending more and more money building IT systems.

1. Poor Alignment of Information Technology to Business Strategy: The challenge to ensure strong alignment between business processes, information system and technologies that support them in the SME. This involves the integration of all aspects of the business and its processes and even across complex multi-partner enterprises using information technology. SMEs were finding it more and more difficult to adapt those increasingly expensive IT systems aligned with business need. Strategic alignment is critical for leveraging organizational performance.

1. Low Business Value Realization from IT by SMEs: The challenge to build information system architecture that can be used to realize business objectives. Architecture only delivers maximum value when it is an integral part of the overall business change lifecycle. In this way, the whole enterprise (business and technology) can be designed together, informing and supporting the business and IT strategies as well as shaping the business and IT itself. These problems signify that the cost and complexity of IT systems have exponentially increased, while the chances of deriving real value from those systems have dramatically decreased.

1.3.           Aim and Objectives of the Study

The main aim of this study is the design and development of an integrated enterprise architecture model for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to optimize across the SME the fragmented legacy of processes (both manual and automated) into an integrated environment that is responsive to change and supportive of the delivery of the business strategy.

In order to achieve this aim, the set of specific objectives were to;

1. Create a metamodel for the SME.
2. Provide an enhanced methodology for enterprise architecture development (method) in SMEs based on continuous improvement process.
3. Apply the Integrated Model to an SME (Donavan Tiles) to standardize the business processes and streamline operations in order to reduce overhead cost.
4. Construct a business application classification model for SMEs from the integrated model based on core SME business processes.
5. Implement a prototype integrated enterprise information system for the case SME based on the integrated model.

1.4.            Significance of the Study

The integrated model for small and medium scale enterprise system forms the structure for integrating the various architectures of the enterprise namely the enterprise, information, information system, infrastructure and governance and this will be used to;

1. Improve planning – help make more informed IT decisions.

1. Reduce Complexity – provide a life cycle management by establishing a process that is focused on building, maintaining, acquiring and retiring technology.
2. Improve IT to Business Alignment – facilitate the adaptation of technology to changing business needs and pressure in enterprise administration.
3. Standardize business processes and streamline the operations of the SME.
4. Provide a structured overview of the SME.

1.5.            Scope of the Study

The subject of integration and enterprise architecture is very extensive and includes a great number of types of systems. The focus of this thesis is on designing archetype enterprise information architecture for the implementation of enterprise systems as an instantiation of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) in terms of a set of software modules, computer platforms, network components, and databases assembled in such a way as to be able to process business transactions and thus meet all the system requirements specified in Enterprise Architecture. Despite the benefits of this research work, it is limited to architecture for integration of enterprise systems. The areas of Intelligent Enterprise Integration and Enterprise Migration and Virtual Enterprise Integration will not be covered in details

1.6.            Limitations of the Study

Enterprise architecture is generally unknown and unused in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). In literature, articles about EA for SMEs are very scarce. This is the most limiting factor to the research. Other factors include;

• Limited time in gathering related data/information needed for the  design and implementation of the system.
• Finance poses some constraint in the purchase of the software needed for the modeling and designing of the system.
• Human or technical assistance also posed some constraints in extracting information from them.

1.7.            Definition Of Terms Archetype

The original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are                                                                                                                       copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; a prototype.

CORBA

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA).   This is a standard developed by (OMG) object management group to provide interoperability among distributed objects. It is the world‘s leading middleware solution enabling the exchange of information, independent hardware platform, programming language and operating system. It is a design specification for an object request broker (ORB) which provides the mechanism for distributed objects to communicate with one another whether locally or remote devices written in different languages or at different locations on network.

Data Integration

Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of these data.

Data Sharing

Making use of the same set of data by different system. Ability to allow multiple users to access information at the same time (concurrently).

EC

Electronic Commerce System (e-Commerce). This means information system that processes data and provides information to support the operations and management of an organisations electronic commerce activities. This includes advertising, selling, order entry, order fulfilment, billing, customer support and related activities.

ERP

Enterprise resource planning systems are a one big vendor software package that helps provide best-practice business process functionality running on a single database.

Enterprise

Enterprise is a large business firm, organization or venture.

Enterprise Architecture

A coherent whole of principles, methods, and models that are used in the design and realization of an enterprise‘s organisational structure, business processes, information systems, and infrastructure.

Enterprise Systems

Enterprise systems (ES) are large-scale, integrated application-software packages that use the computational, data storage, and data transmission power of modern information technology (IT) to support processes, information flows, reporting, and data analytics within and between complex organizations.

Enterprise Information System

An Enterprise Information System is any kind of computing system that is of ‗Enterprise Class‘. This means typically offering high quality of service, dealing with large volume of data and capable of supporting large organisation, ‗an Enterprise‘.

Integration

Combine (parts) into a whole or it can be to complete by the addition of parts.

Integrated Model

A model that presents some key aspects or component subsystems that is to be brought together into one system. This means also the linking together of the major aspects of different computing systems and software applications physically or functionally.

Model

Simplified description of a system to assist calculations and prediction and decision making. It can also be a schematic description of a system, theory or phenomenon that

accounts for known or inferred properties and may be used for further studies of its characteristics.

Metamodel

A metamodel is a model that explains the syntax and semantics of Enterprise Architecture models.

Packaged-to-e-business integration

The package application as enterprise resource planning systems are integrated with e- commerce application, for example processes that deal with e-sales, e-procurement and supply chain management are integrated with packaged systems. The organization can use enterprise application integration (EAI) and e-commerce technology for integrating package application and e-business.

SME

• A Small and Medium Scale Enterprise (SME) is an enterprise that has asset base (excluding land) of between N5million –N500 million and labor force of between 11 and 300 (CBN).
• An SME can be defined as an organization which has no more than 250 employees and has either an annual turnover of less than Euro 40 million, or an annual balance sheet total less than Euro 27 million.

Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of products and services packages required by end customers. It spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption.

System

A system denotes a collection of elements which have mutual relations and which act together to jointly solve some given task (its function). This task could not be solved by any element on its own. {A system could be made out of materials (material system) or

from notions, statements, theorems, etc. (ideal system). The elements of a system can itself be systems (subsystems).

System Architecture

A system architecture or systems architecture is the conceptual design that defines the structure and/or behavior of a system.

System Integration

System integration is the bringing together of the component subsystems into one system and ensuring that the subsystems function together as a system or systems integration is the process of linking together different computing systems and software applications physically or functionally.

SOAP

Simple Object Access Protocol. This an xml-based messaging protocol. It defines asset of rules for structuring messages that can be used for simple one-way messaging but is particularly used for performing remote procedure call (RPC) a request/response dialogue.

XML

Extended Markup Language. A meta-language that allows users to define their own customized markup languages especially in order to display documents on the world wide web. XML was designed to transport and store data while HTML was designed to display data. It focuses on what data is while HTML focuses on how data looks.

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium. An international organization for the world wide web. They developed the standard for XML and other areas. It is an organization that houses the standards of web sites and the way they look.

WS

Web Services are typically application programming interfaces (API) pr web API‘s that can be accessed over a network such as the internet and executed on a remote network hosting the requested services. It is also a group of loosely related web based resources and components that may be used by other web applications over HTTP.

UDDI

The Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) is a platform independent, extensible markup language (XML) based registry for businesses worldwide to list themselves. It is a platform independent framework for describing services, discovering businesses and integrating business services using the internet.

1.8.            Organisation of the Work

The rest of the thesis is organized as follows…

Chapter 2

We looked at the information system architecture as a whole; concepts of enterprise information system, existing architectures, integration approaches and mechanism, and its evolution to extended enterprise system. We also looked at previous works done on enterprise architecture frameworks.

Chapter 3

This chapter explores the research methodology, weaknesses of the existing architecture models, problems of SMEs and the proposed integrated model as a solution to some of the limitations of the existing models.

Chapter 4 Systems Design

Here, we examined the design work. This includes;

1. Develop the AIMES architecture from the views
2. Develop an integrated Enterprise using a process map.
3. Build an Integrated system – Total Information Processing System based on the Industry process map.

1. Test the usefulness of the architecture on a small and medium enterprise.

Chapter five

This chapter shows the implementation of the system using known technologies and Testing of the developed software. The data dictionary, input-output specification, hardware and software requirements

Chapter Six

This chapter tests the architecture and information system using some criteria and derived a conclusion based on some evaluation of the architecture framework.

Chapter Seven

This chapter starts with recommendation, summary, conclusion and future development with references.

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