A company needs to reach two objectives to survive. It should aim at an overall average performance and it may not have any weaknesses which put it at risk. Basically, this corresponds to function similarly to other competitors in the market. Consequently, it will obtain similar results. But aiming for surviving is not going to transform the organisation into a winner. Actually, it will keep the company constantly in a danger zone.

Value Creation - Efficiency and Effectiveness
The vital objective of every company should be to prosper by creating value. This value creation is achieved through the activities and processes performed within the company. They bring the company to life. The prosperity of the company depends of its activities and processes. The company must strive for a maximum of efficiency and effectiveness in a sustained creation of a maximum of value.

Integration
Processes are at the heart of the company. It's not a matter of simply designing processes. Neither can we be satisfied with efficiently and effectively designed processes. Many processes are dealing with information and are executed by people and by software applications. Processes, information, the human organisation and the company's software applications are very different in nature. Each plays its own specific role and has its own characteristics, its own lifecycle and its own architecture. They have their own way to mature. Each of them requires specific knowledge and methods to be designed and developed. But as they need to work perfectly together, they need to be thoughtfully designed and must be well integrated into a single system: the company.

Manageability
Since the birth of IT we have observe various tendencies. Functional business areas have been automated. The systems supporting these automations were build independently from each other. Later these systems were connected, forming a network, in order to obtain the ability to exchange information. Today, as systems of various organisations are communicated with each other, these networks goes beyond the borders of the organisation.
Information from the operational systems was gathered into new systems to serve management purposes. The amount of automated processes increased. There is a proliferation of services. We observe the tendency of customisation of services and products which increases the complexity of the automated processes and, as a consequence, of the systems.
The information stored and processed within a company evolved also. More information is captured and produced. Due to multimedia, the web and the many document formats, the various ways in which information can be stored exploded.
Today, old solutions are mixed with new ones. Technologies from the past have to collaborate with newer technologies. More technologies are added for many reasons.
The way we handle information is changing also. Today information is used in a more dynamic way, often matching the situation or interests of the user. Systems to take the meaning into account. Information is often also used in a social context.
Clearly the manageability of the information, the processes, the information systems and the technology became a daunting mission.

Change and Anticipated Alignment
A company needs to satisfy its customer's needs and therefore make well use of its business environment. Ideally, it should also stay ahead of its competitors to preserve its market shares. And while being prosper today, it must prepare its future. Trying to maintain a status quo or make the wrong moves means deterioration and weakening of the company. Opportunities to secure its prosperity are lost.
In order to remain aligned with the business environment and to maintain a competitive advantage, the company needs processes monitoring these external changes. It must follow, or better, anticipate the evolution of the environment. This is vital to ensure continuously a future alignment. It should even aim at defining itself the course of its environment. Independently of the external evolution, to gain a competitive advantage, it must renew itself from within. It must improve and innovate. New knowledge must be acquired, spread and used. Methods and processes must be improved. New techniques, products and services must be invented. Changes are essential for prosperity. Whereas there is no doubt that immobilism is fatal, changes also imply risks. Any failed change, whether it is an unnecessary change, a wrong change, an inappropriate change or a failed change process, costs. It is a waste of time and of precious resources. It directly undermines the motivation and the credibility, increases resistance on future changes and makes the company more complex and more difficult to manage.
Therefore, a company must develop a great capability to change. It must even be designed to facilitate change while preserving its degree of manageability. These are vital qualities for a company to ensure a long life.

Qualitiy of Work Environment
A well-though internal company organisation will, through its architecture, bring clarity and order. The empty space created by a lack of organisation will quickly be filled with ignorance, confusion, contradictions and conflicts. A great effort will then be spent on communication, on gathering information and on problem solving. As this happens in chaos and under pressure, the solutions are often only quick fixes or ill-conceived and may lead to problems later or elsewhere, form new hindrances and wasting again valuable resources. The focus will be put on obtaining results, at the expense of people and their aspirations. This will create a lot of frustrations and dissatisfaction.
In a well organised work environment, people won't have to waste time on dealing with consequences of the lack of organisation or correcting outcomes of past activities. They can work more efficiently. Their effort can be fully directed to create value and to progress. They can more easily stay focused on the target. As activities run more smoothly and resources are not wasted, there is again time for analysing, thinking, anticipating, planning and organising. By breaking down barriers, offering certainty and removing fear, communication, collaboration and exchange facilitated. An open culture can be installed. In such a work environment, frustrations disappear. People will achieve more and enjoy it. The rewarding feelings of their achievements will boost the motivation, quality increases and loyalty will augment. Opportunities can now be seized to invest in training, in consolidation, in improvements and in further expansion. The work environment forms a fertile ground to foster enthusiasm, energy, creativity, commitment, caring, well-being and opens up opportunities for increased human potential and heighten it to the level of real professionalism. It is in these environments that people can bring up the best of themselves. New ways of managing this increasingly intelligent and sophisticated workforce become possible. Both the organisation and the individual are ready to grow.

A well-designed integrated architecture, thoroughly thought processes, knowledge, best practices and standards contribute to an efficient, effective, manageable organisation capable of handling future changes smoothly. There are many qualities an organisation should have. Some of them greatly depends on the structure, others emanate from the leadership and corporate culture.
But a well-designed architecture is a fundamental and major step towards corporate excellence and forms the foundation for a sustained flourishing business.

The difficult task of ideally appropriately designing the internals of the company can only be achieved by using a systemic, multi-disciplinary, holistic and integrated approach, architectures and models.

Enterprise Engineering is a discipline that studies the architecture and functioning of a company from a social and systemic perspective. Through a holistic, integrated and systematic approach it seeks to (re-)design the enterprise in order to obtain an effective and efficient enterprise while increasing its manageability and its ability to evolve.

Enterprise Engineering is concerned by the company culture, the human organization, the business processes, the information architecture, the software applications and the implemented ICT-technologies.

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