Title: The business architect role is vital to business process transformation
Headings: The business architect role is vital to business process transformation
The business architect role is vital to business process transformation
If you have not yet heard the term "business architect", you soon will, write John Rymer and Alexander Peters of Forrester Research. Whether business architects report into the business or IT, this emerging role will help usher in organisations' transition from IT to business technology (BT).
Recognising the need for a business architect
Independent role for business architects
Previous Forrester articles in the series:

Content: These programmes are not only seeking to improve and transform cross-functional processes, but also to attempt to control the complexity that increasingly sophisticated technologies introduce and capitalise on relationships with customers and suppliers. In the survey Forrester carried out for this research, we found that organisations that were transforming their businesses, processes and information systems needed the business architect role most acutely. Recognising the need for a business architect
What is not obvious to many who are still relatively new to the business process transformation scene is how this crucial position should be organised, who should occupy it, and what business architects should do. Our research also indicates that only a handful of firms are consistently trying to fill this role, in part because it is so difficult to fill - although business process professionals lead the way in bringing business architects into process transformation initiatives. Our survey of more than 150 businesses and IT executives who engage in business change programmes found that: Business architect is too often a missing link that needs to emerge. Some 35% of organisations have not established the business architect role (level 1), 33% have developed some business architecture guidelines but do not use them across the organisation (level 2), and 20% have defined a consistent architecture framework for business processes (level 3). But only 6% of organisations use this framework to fuel the organisation's portfolio of business services for prioritising business process change investments (level 4); a further 6% see business architecture as a strategic capability for decision-making (level 5). Management practices around the business architect position are a work in progress.