Crafting Appropriate Oracle Future State Architectures for Success

The one constant about doing business in today’s landscape is that, well, there are no constants. With the pace of disruption, anything and everything can change at a moment’s notice – and the companies that are best prepared to handle agile change are the companies most likely to succeed in our modern business world.

But your ongoing success doesn’t simply rely on your ability to change, it relies on your ability to change with intention. To pull ahead of your competitors, you must have the flexibility to transform quickly, in a manner that supports your organization’s long-term goals and objectives.

As you already know, one of the best ways to achieve intentional change in the modern business world is to create future state architectures that effectively align your strategies and goals with your IT capabilities. That’s why, today, we’ll be talking about a methodology you can use to simplify the process of creating appropriate Oracle future state architectures.

Crafting a Future State Architecture, Step by Step

As an EA, you know that “architecture” doesn’t lie in using a single tool or technology; instead it rests on building an integrated ecosystem that supports your processes, procedures, and operations to deliver long-term business value by accomplishing flexible, agile objectives.

Follow these steps to succeed in the process:

1. Determine your strategy and its rationale

   Before you can make plans to reach your future state, you must know what you want to achieve. Sit down with executives and senior management from LOBs to determine a cohesive business strategy – and make sure you know whythese strategies are important to each stakeholder. Knowing the rationale behind each strategy will help you ID appropriate IT solutions to meet operational goals.

2. Assess your current state architecture

   Map your current systems and architecture end to end. This is a complex process, so expect it to take a lot of time and a lot of coffee. Simplify the process by using architecture mapping tools that make your findings clearer and easier to explain to others, since the next step takes quite a bit of careful, nuanced discussion.

3. Analyze your current state to ID inefficiencies

   Once you know your current state, you can identify your current inefficiencies, including uncoordinated activities and fragmented processes. Be prepared for pushback in this stage because workers may feel that your well-intentioned questions about bottlenecks and inefficiencies are an attack on the way they complete tasks. This stage requires both deep analysis and deep finesse.

4. Start targeting ways to achieve immediate wins

   Once you’ve identified the largest inefficiencies, see what you can clear up quickly and easily. Not only does this step help increase buy-in for additional (and more drastic) planning for your future state architectures, it also helps you clearly assess your culture’s willingness to change, which may help you craft a better, more achievable and realistic future state architecture. Ensure appropriate governance in response to even your quickest wins – and don’t forget to set up success metrics that help you measure and demonstrate your progress.

5. Plan your full future state architecture

   Using the information you’ve gathered about current inefficiencies and your organization’s overall readiness for transformation, you can start mapping your proposed future state architecture. Remember what I mentioned at the beginning of this article, however: the only thing constant in business is change. This means you must create a flexible, agile future state architecture in which it’s easy to measure progress and to modify your plans at will.

Achieving Your Future State Is Easier with Oracle Future State Architectures

If your business runs on Oracle hardware and software, you’re in luck. Your job as an EA will be a lot easier because Oracle has simplified the planning process significantly by developing targeted tools and artifacts that help you clearly and easily visualize each step of your transformation to Oracle future state architectures.

Using Oracle-built frameworks, you’ll be empowered to not only identify your short- and long-term strategies and the rationale behind those strategies, you’ll also be able to craft a clear, fully understandable roadmap that will help you establish and measure your progress toward your future state architecture.

Because the Oracle future state architectures planning tools are color-coded and extremely understandable, using them will also give you the freedom to adjust your future state architecture goals with ease, so that you maintain full competitive agility while staying true to your long-term organizational objectives.

Ready to see how easy it can be to plan your Oracle future state architectures with purpose-built tools? Want to kick-start your future state architecture planning with an expert Oracle enterprise architect? Curious about your options for architecture in the cloud vs. on premises?

For the past 20 years, Centroid has helped enterprises streamline and simplify their architectures, driving national and global corporations to achieve company-wide efficiencies and collaboration they never thought possible. The experts at Centroid can help you too… but it’s up to you to take the first step.

Contact the Centroid team to get more information on how you can simplify your job as an EA with Oracle future state architectures tools, or work with one of Centroid’s expert enterprise architects to get help on demand.