Hopefully, most of companies have launched transformation programs and, as Deloitte reports in its 2011 survey, more than 52% of UK companies had reached implementation phase by 2011 with 75% among big companies. Moreover the same report shows that budgets are expected to be contained between 1,2m and 12m euros, larger amounts being intended only for biggest organizations.

But, if boards seem to be aware of Solvency II new responsibilities and opportunities, projects and programs still undergo uncertainties and questions :

• on capital calculation methods which still have to be tuned and for some of them fullly specified
• on data which have to be collected, processed, checked and validated for each calculation method
• on organization which have to get responsibilities of subprocesses and define how they intend to performe them
• on management which have to prepare people and to request investment for resources

Finally, companies undergo 2 opposing forces : strong dependancies between Solvency II aspects and fragmentation forces coming from solving approach which have been selected to deal with complexities : technical (actuary, computing, business,…) and social (actors, governance, influence,…). Technical fragmentation comes from necessity to adopt partial analytical approach. Social fragmentation comes from business mindset, culture, influence competition.

All that draws a web of multifaceted questions with some among them being knitted with the others. Indeed, as soon as programs start to contemplate data, they quickly have to deal with risks models and with business process question. Should they refine risks models that they have soon to deal with strategy, risks management issues and data quality. Result of uncertainty for one aspect is uncertainty for all others.

It comes that Solvency II transformational programs are not able to define any specific target, but just a vision of compounded scenarios associated to rules and guidance. They draw roadmaps with stages tending to one or more of the vision scenarios. More the stages are shared by roadmaps, more programs will have options in front of them and will be flexible. Obviously, these plans include IT activities, platform developments and roll-outs otherwise programs may face to even more social fragmentation and more complexities which could severely hamper their success.

Starting and launching a program dynamic appears to be uneasy.

Solvency II transformations hit :

• financial departments which have to reduce drastically balance sheet timetable production and, for that, to reengineer their processes,
• actuaries departements which have to radically change the way they are doing their business,
• business managers which have to overhaul their decision processes for taking in account risks costs
• top managers who have to review all performance and management system, better rewarding better risks management.

How to not involve all these stakeholders in transformation definition and management if they have to agree on quick wins at program roadmaps starting point and on objectives to be reached.. To cope with uncertainty, programs have to settle a strong management structure which could take decisions all along  roadmaps. Then, best implementation approaches are agile steered by risks.

Programs have to consider 2 types of risks :

• Requirements instabilty due to late publication of regulatory guidelines and to difficulty to find an effective solution to do Solvency II Reporting in the required timetable.
• Integration difficulty due to existing processes and practices based on user tools, not too much specified nor standardized, and very loosely integrated thanks to manual procedures

If Information technology criticity hasn’t appeared at the beginning, it won’t stay long time before it becomes an issue, because most of risks come from data processing and  calculation which are done often within excel spreadsheets or other user data management solution like SAS Windows or other Windows DBMS. These solutions which allow to quick correct input data and change calculation rules as well seem extremely flexible,

But they rise risks of data errors, data integrity and confidentiality. they have slowed down integration as all information exchange are manual, specific to each actors. Changing is not so easy as flexibility is an unvaluable advantage for some business aspects.

Yet, all activities of preparing, collecting, verifying data, calculating provisions, matching with accounting data, writing analyzes memorandum would be totally overhauled by Solvency II since prospect discounted cash flows method requires finest grain of data, since Solvency II rules require high data quality level and a comprehensive data auditability. From data point of view, Solvency II would be a waterfall which will contains not only detailed operational data, but organizational, costs, financial and economic prospect data.

In this context, any datawarehouse approach would bear a huge number of specifications for stable data objects  or would have to  rely on interfaces technology able to support vert often changes.

At this point, it appears that some Solvency II programs which rushed into modelization for being able to quickly provide feedback on captal costs tendancies, made a mistake since it appears better to manage all aspects at the same time and to have a balanced progress.

• CIMCON Software (XLAudit and XLRisk)
• Prodiance (Spreadsheet IQ)
• ClusterSeven (Enterprise Spreadsheet Manager)
• Finsbury Solutions (EUC Enterprise)
• ComplyXL from Lyquidity.com

Then Solvency II programs have choices of settle 3 types of organization:

• centralized organisation which prepares plans for all actors and  manage execution. They may soon face to plans designing issues since everybody does not exactly know at the beginning the method for calculating future discounted cash flows, for instance. And if programs go on, they soon may be disaligned with stakeholders expectations and rise serious risks on success.
• decentralized organisation which supports actors for preparing plans and managing execution. They may soon face to integration issues, fragmentation of points of view and diverging objectives. In this context, decision to implement a shared platforms may happen late, hamper reporing efficiency, rise risks on delay and quality.
• Mixed organisation which draws a common design framework in which each stakeholder has to develop its own stages of roadmap. This framework allows to keep tight all points of view and creates actors empowerment for them being able to find local optimizations and to curb change resistance.

Finding right boundary for what should be included in programs or remain outside is not easy when purpose is process and data standardization as it comes soon to share processing platforms. This decision may turn tricky since taken too much in advance, it may lead to misalignement, especially when editors and companies do not have all regulatory requirements. If taken too late, it may cause process inefficiencies. Regarding these kind of solutions some companies decided to start with prototypes.

For Solvency II changes, this paper shows that business issues and Information Technology issues are tightly intricated. They have to be managed together for avoiding any harmful fragmentation.  In such a transformation  business are  involved  at steering level and in the same time, should be supported to define their new role.

It is necessary to create or increase empathy between business departments and Information Technology as they have to work hand by hand in roadmaps design and to take right and timely decisions. All that pledges for mixed program approach adoption.

Programs will find favourable and unvaluable support from Enterprise architecture approach as it builds the design shared framework for program actors, IT and non IT, and all other condition which will allow all of them to be effective.

IT budgets always increase year after year. It is their fate since new projects increase IS functions and, consequently, yearly maintenance. To cope with this situation, CIOs have settled portfolio management process:they assess projects from several points of view -technical, business, risks, strategy…- and make priorities. It results in postponing low prority projects…

After a while, postponed projects pile up like sand and become high priority. So, IT budgets contain also low priority projects which have become high prority for budget year.

Finally, projects portfolio is viewed by Business units as postponing facility on behalf of IT Division. No matter Business units are main projects issuers who make IT budget growing. Moreover they use to complain for additional IT costs though they are not accountable for expected gains which projects business cases have set under their responsibility.

When a project is delayed, costs usually increase in proportion of the time. So current IT capital expenditure budget is also made of slipped projects pieces as current IT operations expenditure budget still contains projects slipped since they have already rolled out platforms.

As current IT budget is flood of slipped past projects, less and less room remains for new ones. Negotiations are hard. Pure IT projects are scrutinized and often postponed if they have not a strong costs saving business case. So are pieces around Business projects that not seem to be required to Business even though IT has stated they are highly desirable.

It comes that IT planning and budgeting are breaking teeth activities. In such a situation, even the best CIO could not avoid to be seen as delayer and costs bearer. Poor companies strategy execution is felt due to IT issues that CIOs didn’t deal with. It has lead IT Divisions to streamline their operations by adopting ITIL and service orientation which have transformed them into internal service providers. Company systems are clearly shown as coming from Business demands.

In the same time, forces around IT Divisions continue to change : Business unitsare keener to be more agile and to be more empowered for local optimisations and transformations. 2012 would be even a turn point. Cloud business would increase, fuelled by SME market. It would be more attractive for some non critical big companies business. Integrators have transformed themselves into Business Process turnkey deliverers able to deal directly with Business Units which challenge their internal services provider by external ones.  For big business moves, IT Divisions are already out of touch, as Business Units have become main prescriptors for solutions. At the end, only systems maintenance and some technology projects, like email systems, networks or infrastructure will remain under IT responsibility.

Are dices already throwed and finally, Gartner prediction will be just a trend estimation when saying: “By 2015, 35 percent of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget. CIOs will see some of their current budget simply reallocated to other areas of the business. In other cases, IT projects will be redefined as business projects with line-of-business managers in control.” ?

If Information Technology appears more and more embedded in Business, reverse is also true. Business units would like to be sure that technology work mainly on their behalf. As Business has become more and more complex due to customization, competition, cooperation, integration,… all business units must act toward IT in a coordinated way. On the other side, IT should be more business oriented, getting multi skilled people, Business and IT, keeping new risponsibilities, for instance those of Business process turn key internal deliverer and/or Business process support. All this would happen only in favourable conditions, environment and context resulting of business units coordinated vision and new links established with IT. Some Forrester analysts feel, this would be a “Copernican shift” : a radical change in IT mindset.

A new coordination business function would be pivotal for this change, this is Enterprise Architecture. Reporting to CEO it help to bring projects portfolio management outside IT Division, as a core process for steering enterprise change.  It settles processes to identify and qualify business projects candidates. It supports decision process and implementation. It monitors utilization. But, the really change in there is that projects are no more lead for developing systems but centered on business processes or capabilities development. Main considerations are for business, projects are managed by business, roll-out and implementation are planned taking in account business costraints before technical ones, purposes are business objectives.

This is a shift in company change center of gravity. Decision and execution will be smoother as actors contributes with respect to their stakes.  CIO is no more an internal service provider executing orders from business, but a partner who contributes positively to business projects. Technical debt which slow down change is not only a CIO question to deal with, but a company question. Project risks are part of business risks and included in enterprise risks management process.

Then, if projects are in late as strategy execution slips, priorities are set according to business costraints, replanning is done in accordance too with a better balance of resources. In 2012  crisis context, companies are more fragile, so changing successfully has become more important. It is all my 2012 wishes for enterprises : “to change successfully”

Change approach

European economic prospects are gloomy. Just have a look to newspapers frontpages if you are not yet convinced. In such context, as I wrote once, best strategy would be to “be prepared to start again“. That means to be aligned with customers expectations and to be competitive when business will start, in short, having a good position, on good place, at good price. Yet every european companies have cut at first their 2012 budget to save cash which threatens to rarefy.

Then, for most of companies, business equation will be : transforming themselves while saving capital spending

Currently, Europe is hit by a severe liquidity crisis which have its roots in questionable solvency of states which spread to banks. Financial european world does not trust each other and borrows liquidities at very high interest rates which darken states and banks solvency more and more. How to get out this revolving door circle is the question which hogs every european summits for months.

What is taking out from all that: the urge to restart cash machine by restoring economic growth based on enterprises competitivity. Several medicines are contemplated : euro depreciation which lower prices but rise fears of capital shrinking and more questions on solvency, frugal states budget and tax cuts which mitigate unit labour costs but rise fears on social model and states solvency. Anyway, all this would take time and is drawing a bleak outlook for next years.

Then, according to their own prospects enterprises would follow 2 strategies :

• be prepared : get slimmer and stay prepared for economy recovery
• be active : contribute to restore growth and transforming themselves to be more competitive

Then how to get transformed while saving capital expenditure ?

First of all, being successful in transformation project. For years, business gurus explained that enterprises are draining a lot of energy to define brilliant strategies but fall short in execution (“[Strategy] Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today.  Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes. Ram Charan, Larry Bossidy).

In 2008, in a management conference which reviewed all aspects of question, William Malek  sum up causes of failure. They are:

• No common language
• No common framework
• No integrated systemic planning process
• Poor design of organizational system accountabilities
• Representational issues of complexity at a high level of abstraction
• Organizational maturity phases require different methods and leadership

For enterprises that means a lot of energy consumption – time, cash, motivation – for getting a small part of strategy goals and gains.

Here, the point is not to say that failure is not acceptable since all projects have a given part of intractable risks and may be bets worth to be done. But when so much hurdles gloom results, it is almost impossible to get trust, reputation and finally market support in a struggling economic context.

Now it is time to change that… It is time to radically Improve change efficiency and strategy execution. It is time to drive people to success which will drive them to another successes… It is time to leverage companies competences and capabilities… to glue operations, IT and management people into a global team…

This will restore trust into companies capabilities to be competitive, fuel more cash and capital and, finally,  break the revolving door cycle.

For reshuffling their capabilities, companies have to establish a new function at C-level which will be in charge of building common framework and common language. It will then coordinate work on change targets identification, planning and performance framework for executing strategy. Then it will provide scope and roadmap to companies change managers and project managers and drive an integrated systemic planning projet. It will provide tools and method with high level of abstraction and help to define the good change method.

Change approach

Getting out Babel tower by making IT and financial people working hand in hand with production, sales, logistics and other enterprise functions is today mandatory for being sufficiently integrated.

To cope with new customers and market expectations, companies needs to drive their managers to more systemic approach of change. They will obtain strong foundations and directions which will improve changes straightness and successes. Common language and common framework will increase trust between internal stakeholders and increase successes.

All this is matter of Enterprise Architecture.

For years, some business bodies managed to join their competences to define framework guidelines to drive change successfulliy within complex organisations. They relied on best practices approach to provide pragmatic and usable methods and had the vision of bringing systemic knowledge to Enterprise Change approach. They started to work on IT/Business alignment topic which was hardly enough with respect to challenge. One of the most interesting body, The Open Group, crossed the boundary and relased TOGAF 9 as a comprehensive change management framework. Even if some improvements may be expected, it is already a strong foundation for companies own change practice.

Good demonstration of Enterprise Architecture efficiency is “Going Digital” program of Procter & Gamble which gained praise by industry. Which company will be the next one ?

Though business is now looking after whole plants which would be able to manufacture several type of products or whole systems which may be used for different types of business cases, investment choice is conducted the same way it was when we were on the other side of the road. Business people relying on its business background try to figure out how a whole plant should work and forward technical issues to engineers and IT Divisions. Would you entrust the design of a business building to business people ? You have the risk to get a warehouse with a row of tables and not much heating nor air conditioning except for exectives. I am not kidding, I really saw it in a high tech company.

By now, for such a design, it is usual to hire architects for this job, since everybody knows that people are more effective in an environment build for them, not only considering the job, but considering that they spend a fair part of their life doing the job. Even plants are arranged specifically around people doing their job, which contribute to high productivity and high quality. This is the result of a mix of comprehensive manufacturing knowledge, social psychology, building knowledge, business understanding, security all things which don’t fit in one head only. Architecure is the field of knowledge which gather input of all these fields to find effective solutions for buildings.

Why shouldn’t be the same for Information Systems ? They are not used anymore by employees to perform their tasks, instead they have got the role of assigning tasks to them in real time. They manage and orchestrate the way groups of people collaborate in a business process or in a project, they send information to different types of terminal – smartphone, notebook, phone – anyway, anywhere. Like walls, roof and windows, they shape our business space and our business time. More and more companies ask to acquire whole business process systems totally integrated. If ERPs respond to this requirement, with this type of solution companies should endorse editor business view which is worth for common parts of business but not for all processes. Each company is unique with a unique and specific business model which contribute to its success which needs to be preserved.

Information systems architecture should develop the knowledge and the conceptual tools to take-up this complex challenge which address business, social, human, technical issues. Today, information systems architecture (IS Architecture) is developping enterprise capability support which encompasses business functions and pose the problem of stovepipes. Its knwoledge is mainly based on best practices shared by companies architects. But how IS Architecture deal with human and organisational aspects ? What is its real finality ? How does it contribute ethically to the good and the best ?

This paper of Nicolas Bouleau develop a view of a place of architecture between people, society and technology. It recalls to us that architecture takes a lot of its technology from mathematics as computing does. And mathematics is somehow an harmony research solving space and human problems which has lead to some masterpieces like Pazzis Chapel in Florence.

Another thinker is Nikos Salingaros who has written a book “A Theory of Architecture“  which review and discuss some basis of Architecture especially modelling, patterns using, ideas and culture spreading across organisations.

I could also mention Neil Leach who has published “Rethinking Architecture” where he reports his readings of great philosphers regarding Architecture.

Finally I would like to quote the presentation of  Leonard Fehskens, VP of Opengroup, at Open group Munich conference, in 2008,  “Re-thinking Architecture” (may require login).

IS Architecture (and Enterprise Architecture) should step over wharehouse current state to go toward a true art which provides solutions to space and time management of modern organisations adressing all issues business, social, individual, technical.  I wish aesthetic, ethics, harmony enter in IS architects vocabulary beside Business process, interoperability, SOA and so on…

Architects are special people who cook their own methods and are reluctant to share views.  But, when it is worth and possible, they are keen to see what happens in the neighbours kitchen. According to the crowd, it seems that the CESAMES kitchen is valuable as may testify its website. Moreover, during the show, they appeared like a close-knit team, always ready and entusiastic to share their commitment to Architecture. Because they are convinced that is the main challenge of the XXIst century.

The conference was unusual. Few traditional speakings, except the well known professeur Jacques Printz which talk about architect, uncertainty and chaos. Most part of the conference has been taken by workgroups, one on a System Architecture case from Claude Feliot (Alsthom Transport), the other on an Enterprise Architecture case from Jean-Marie Faure (Crédit Agricole). Each attendee was expected to follow both of them.

Very good formula of Architectures Design experience which makes feel attendees how closed they are, every subjects which filled conversations during the closing cocktail.

From my point of view this vision is very interesting and worth to support. System Architecture practitionners may help Enterprise Architects for explaining they really deal with functioning enterprise complexity and not with application dataflows complication.

And not the least, the team gathered around Daniel Krob spread entusiastically values of being open minded, sharing knowledge and practices, transparency.   

• What happened really ?
• Actually, most companies did not change their mindset regarding customers, contrary to what they said. They continue to push offers. For them, value is in offer richness not in its real utility. It is up to the customer to make the choice.
• .
• They continue to have a “Quetelet” customer vision which is very far from local reality and diversity They continue to give value to big bureaucratic organisations or they outsource ailing activities which won’t behave better with no chance.
• And this will continue until an actor will come with the right mindset and a flexible organization. If it happens, it could turn the Market upside down. Even if big companies thought too big to fail, they may sit in front of new dangerous competitors.
• .
• Situation is not black and white, some companies have already started to change their mindset and have got a new momentum in their business. Nevertheless, they don’t succeed to create a strong relationship with their customers. Their strategy focused on price as main value for customer. But, since they are fat organizations, they never were able to compete with true lowcost companies, they only destroy value.
• .
• In France, this kind of bad strategy has been possible, because such companies operate on quasi monopolistic markets from which they perceive a kind of guaranteed income, but they really destroyed value. That’s why they fear competition and have managed to avoid it.
• .
• What I would like to ?
• I dream services companies really taking an account of what I am, what I think, what are my points of view.
• Instead of offering a bunch of services I am paying integrally, from which I hardly use some with difficulty, I would like to have an ordered set of services, integrated in my processes, which I naturally use, for which I know why I pay.
• .
• For example, if my bank, instead of giving me a bunch of functions to manage my cash, which not really fits in my own cash management process, had given me such a tools, I would have felt that it took care of me.
• .
• If my bank, instead of charging me and causing me delay because I am changing county, had managed data centrally and had implemented smooth business processes to provide me the service i deserve, I would have felt that it took care of me.
• 
• What is possible ?
• Today all the technology required to move from service offer pushing logic to a more customized one, exists. DesignThinking (previous post) could be used to design services adapted to customer point of view, SOA Architectures and BPM to build information systems required.
• .
• Such a move, accompanied by a change in customer relationship, would target and achieve a true long term relation which would benefit of long tail style of business permitted by Internet. For sure, it could be a competitive advantage and a spingboard to capture a big part of the market.
• .
• Some people argues that no change is required thanks to laws or rules which favor big companies.  Today, small internet companies are struggling to settle a business model which should help to offset product high costs. For this, as they work essentially on distribution part, they have to reach a more integrated supplychain organziation encompassing some chunks of production.
• .
• But whenever one or more companies will get there, they will be able to put upside down the market on the model of what happened in 2000 with eBusiness revolution.
• 
  
• Then, what lacks for moving ?
• By now, companies have developped more or less good information system capabilities. Each of them is able to acquire, roll out and manage applications. Most of complaints of today regards strategic alignement, e. g. the use of the technology by business.
• .
• Giving new methods to IT departments for improving their business understanding would not be enough to succeed. Indeed, it is exactly what they have done and nothing has changed regarding companies customers relations.
• .
• The solution is a change in Enterprise Architecture lead by a special change manager, the Enterprise Architect, who would be able to pull business and IT in a same time. He will help business to spread mindset change across organisation and business processes, and he will pull IT Department which will have to  provide the right service when required to the right person at the righ cost. At last, Business would have changed and got full technology benefits.
• .
• This is the very purpose of Enterprise Architecture.

When the project scope comes to include several IT solutions, it becomes a true challenge, even for experimented solution architects, to drive such a project.  So, when enterprise architect has been called, it has to roll-back to business expectations to produce a realistic business plan.  Indeed, to sort out functioning enterprise complexity, enterprise architect ought to work at usages level.

Who could doubt of functioning enterprise complexity ? Enterprise may be compared to a knot of flows. For each of them,  the enterprise perform some activities and manage those done by partners or contractors.  For example, in the RH flow, collecting applying forms and qualifying them may be done by a subcontractor, or payroll activity may be outsourced. If it does not perform an activity required for a flow, at least enterprises need to control it. The same occurs for customers relationship flow, end customers may not be direct enterprise customers, nevertheless the entire flow has to be controlled.

With the time, enterprises have developed internal processes to perform parts of flows and to control other parts. It means that often external events are likely to  impact activities which control flows and require to change internal architecture.  The same happens when enterprise wishes to change the way it is doing its own activities, for example implementing lean management.  It impacts the entire flow and drive change for external partners.

Innovations which change the way of performing one or more flows, are causing a lot of changes internally and externally on the activities and consequently on IT usages.  Contemplating IT solution highlights  technical debt and all impacts on legacy system which, although not so well aligned, provides good quality of service for reasonable costs.  Then,  enterprise architects have to sit down around the table and drive the process toward a road-map.  Figuring out how enterprise will work, modelling, simulating, planning change according to business priority and resources, following development, driving new business roll-out, all these are what enterprise architecture may bring to innovators.  It work at business capability level, IT usages  and IT solutions levels for building the large and consistent view only able to give visibility and decision capability to companies willing to innovate on their business.

It is all the discussion around new smart meters  to be rolled out by ErDF in France. It is far from being only a technological innovation, it put at stake a whole business transformation for dealing with strategic issues.  Especially, option of setting all in one box at customer premises funded by energy resellers compared to those of setting a hub managed by electricity distributor for controlling services delivery,  is typically an enterprise architecture discussion.

Enterprise architects could design comprehensive scenarios and lead experimentations to support  ErDF  discussions with business partners and to better shape a vision which is not enough developed to be understood by stakeholders. Today, all of them want its part of the cake and propose its own Market vision while ErDF is more or less hanged on to a political decision.  For me the critical point is that advantages for end customers  are not enough clear which rise resistance and hampers good discussions with other stakeholders.  It is like in magic tricks where looks are caught to wrong direction, in this case everybody look at the box instead of considering services to customers. A Design Thinking approach embedded in the Enterprise Architecture cycle may have avoided this pitfall.

In such complex systems with social issues, enterprise architecture is able to bring tools which outline relationships between customer expectations, stakeholders  requirements, technological opportunities and constraints. It draws consistent points of view which take account of actors issues in all domains, business and technology.  It gives an invaluable decision support for leading such a business transformation.

Françoise Mercadal-Delasalles, Head of Human Resources at Socgen, outline how the bank current strategy based on innovation and on weaving new ways of customer relationship, is in line with Cigref Foundation researches objectives which are to show how  usages of Information Technology sustain business innovation.  I am noting too another similarity on strong international  culture of Socgen and Cigref Foundation which may claim to be a first class international think tank on Information Technology.

Taobao.com, leading Chinese company in e-commerce, has just entered the top 100 companies with the highest numerical value in the unlisted world. Lu Peng his vice-president told its impressive story. I had the opportunity to discuss a little bit about its terrific numbers.  If we have a look beyond  the business size indicator we  would discover soon that China is at the first stage of e-Commerce which is “produced locally-sold locally”. All remain to be build for next stages which are “produced remotely-sold locally”, especially a strong logistic business to bring goods and services to the costumer premises.

Professors XIE, TSUI and GUO made presentations which may have been done in a discussion about west companies. The matters were “IT High management support, competences, IT department organisation, middle management support” beside “Knowledge management” opportunities from IT and managing invetsment on the Business alignment criteria.

Thierry Gaudin made a brilliant talk on humanity futur challenges especially decrease of biodiversity, climate change, ageing of west people, all what innovations should help to face. I had a little conversation with Thierry who explained to me that prospective is an uneasy work since scientific domains produce models with different maturity levels. The less mature to predict fuiture is from economics.  As well, it is incredibily difficult to weave relations between models and to figure out  the impacts of phenomenon from one model to other domain model.

Dr Françoise Roure showed opportunities and threads of online communities. It seems to be a growing and pervavise subject for Business since interconnecting is exploding.

Professor El Sawy talked about the stage of Fusion view where business models are now designed to digital platforms. He identifed game changers in digital community who will open new opportunities for business in the next 5 years. Especially in the spaces of Internet business processes, internet social networks, internet of things.

Professor HO outlined in details the adoption of Product Lifecycle management process and tools in Tawain industries. He showed expectations, trends, brakes in great details. Proudly, it is one of few fields where french software idnustry is a major player through Dassault Systèmes.

Lyne Bouchard presented a Canadian think tank, action IT, which support innovations through IT.

Professor Benoît Aubert unveiled first results of IT usages in Canadian Business. It seems that agressive growing firms benefit of scalability given by IS systems. Analyst based business firms benefit of large data volume capability. Cost saving based businesses have opportunities to outsource their IS. In short, integration based usages of IS seems to provide more benefits than  reactive usages.

It is always interesting and mind refreshing to see how others are dealing with the challenges in front of us, since they are questionning in the same way our old west societies. But, I am pleased to stay on former Senator Pierre Lafitte talk which outlined how an old industry like tourism is impacted with big changes due to IT new capabilities.

Yet, with architecture and enterprise architecture, you may be surprised. Although you have trained all your architects, you may not quicken the pace of changes in your information system architecture. This is because architects are doing only a small part of the architecture, main design and decisions are done by Project managers. Some companies have even coined the name “Technical Project managers” to promote architects to management position. This means that if you have invested to roll-out a framework like TOGAF among your architects, you may likely miss your ROI.

So, when you are contemplating a plan to increase your organisation competences on architecture, you’d better analyse who is doing architecture and how it is done. In all Architecture domains – Business, Information  Systems, technology –  you have 2 types of architects : one manage context and environment, one manage business domain or solution. If architect is the name  granted to first, the second is often the project manager, or a technical solution expert to design implemention. On the other hand, if you want to change the way projects are doing architecture, by promoting architects, your will run out of  resource quickly, and you will loose your project managers.

It is better to recognize project manager role in domain or solution architecture. Since it is part of the overall process, he has to be included in training plans, and should report to Architecture board for this responsibility. TOGAF 9 didn’t forget Project managers in its skills framework.

In your organisation you have Enterprise Business architects, Enterprise Information System Architects, Enterprise Technical Architects who design all shared services for domains and solutions. Then, you have project managers in charge of developing solutions, for which they employ solution architects – business, data, application, technical -. Enterprise Chief architect manage all Enterprise Architects, he is responsible for tools, methods and process quality for keeping all design and implementations aligned with strategy.

Today, most of organisations have Solution architects who work for Project managers, and an enterprise chief architect often focused on Technical Architecture. Some have Enterprise Information System architects. Often business architecture is kept apart. Then, increasing your organisation competence require in some respect, organisational changes, process reengineering and a customized training plan.