A “capable enterprise” is one that achieves consistently superior performance; one that consistently delivers superior value to its customers, innovates more rapidly, is difficult to imitate, and is more profitable. A capable enterprise is one that has developed and sustained a few vital capabilities. Such enterprise capabilities represent repeatable patterns of action in pursuit of its goals.
An enterprise capability enables an organisation to perform optimally in activities that typically require knowledge, processes, people, technology and other assets. Wow, this is a mouthful.
Enterprise capabilities represent the collective abilities of the organisation to accomplish strategic objectives. They make the organisation stand out, make it different. And more importantly, they make the business agile. In the words of Ross et all. (see here), enterprise capabilities enable business modularity and business innovation.
Business innovation can be achieved by building new or refactoring existing enterprise capabilities. Sometimes, outsourcing or spinning off a capability may enable the organisation to focus on its core capabilities. An enterprise architecture that is modelled using enterprise capabilities is:
- logical and intuitive,
- stable, and
- non-redundant yet comprehensive
An enterprise capability is an elemental entity that encapsulates what the business does and can do and how it wants to make a difference. Enterprise capabilities focus on describing “What” and the “Why” of a business domain, rather than the how, who, where, when even though they are essential for a full contextual picture of the business need. An enterprise capability has a clear, differentiating enterprise goal and finality.
While a process is needed for its implementation, the process by itself (the “how”) does not embody the enterprise capability. Nor is an organisation chart (“the “who”). The same applies to a supporting IT platform: it may be core to its implementation, but by itself it is not the enterprise capability. In fact, a platform could support a number of enterprise capabilities as a sort of basic infrastructure or backbone.
An enterprise capability for digital business typically includes:
- a self-service workflow that focuses on minimising manual work inside the organisation, while maximising user experience and privacy
- technologies and data stores (that may be shared with other enterprise capabilities if non-functional needs can still be still met, such as privacy)
- manual processes for handling complaints and incidents with a focus on optimising the lifelong user experience and loyalty
- automated processes to handle migrations and synchronisations with legacy processes.
References
Enterprise Architecture As Strategy, 2006, Ross, Jeanne W, et all
Controlled AI services 