Case Study: Toyota Europe, Campbell Soup Company, Sony Pictures, and W.W Grainger: Making the Case for Enterprise Architects

What is the value derived from companies with mature enterprise architectures? Are there any downsides that you can see? Discuss.

Mature enterprise architectures have many advantages that help them perform better than enterprises that are not that mature. The first advantage or value is the brand itself and the loyalty that the customers have developed to it throughout the life cycle of the organization. For example, what if a person has a choice to make to buy a car, what would be the easiest choice, a Toyota or a new brand? Another value is the shared knowledge base that the enterprise has gathered over a longer period of time. This knowledge could be related to either of the customer behavior or the technical aspects of the products and how they can be better presented to the customers.

It is also true that there are some downsides of being a mature enterprise. The one primary downsize is that as a mature enterprise, you might start to take the competitors lightly and be beaten by them. Also, as a mature enterprise, there might exist a resistance to change.