A Survey on Enterprise Architecture Management in Small and

Medium Enterprises

Matthias Wißotzki, Felix Timm and

Anna Sonnenberger

Institute of Computer Sciences, University of Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Str. 22, 18059, Rostock, Germany

Keywords: Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Management, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME),

Empirical Study, IT-Management.

Abstract: Companies need to control enterprise-wide processes and adopt matching actions. In the past, IT focused

architectures failed to integrate other layers and functions of the enterprise. The connection between just

business-focused and IT-focused managing has to be established in consideration to the dynamic

environment, forcing for adaption and internal changing of enterprises. This paper defines important terms

for understanding of Enterprise Architectures (EA) and its Management (EAM), its importance as well as its

adaptability for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). An empirical survey underlines the adaptability

by researching the implementation of EAM in SME in practice. The survey shows that IT focus asserted by

the literature sources is not realized in practice.

1 INTRODUCTION

Information Technology (IT) and other parts of

enterprises have to act together if companies want to

keep their competitive advantage and gain their

shares of fast moving markets. It is essential to make

the organization more sensitive towards the

interaction of business strategies, customers, IT

systems and organizational units. There is a need to

support enterprises during the change from

manufacturing to service and consulting oriented

enterprises supported by IT systems. (Argente et al.,

2010)

Caused by the number and variety of comparable

and replaceable products, the pressure to manage the

business processes and its technical support as a

whole increases. One reason is the continuously

accelerating development of IT as an important

decisive influencing factor of companies because of

its supporting, enabling and driving functionality.

(Ahlemann et al., 2012)

The purpose of this paper is researching the

adaptability of EAM for SME in practice by an

empirical study, underlined by defining important

terms in the field of EAM unambiguously, and

finally to point out current gaps on this topic

and understanding. After clarifying the used

methodology and basic concepts, a survey design

and its evaluation is presented. These findings are

discussed with theoretical background.

2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In the frame of this work a survey in appropriate

enterprises as a quantitative data collection method.

(Runeson, Höst, 2009) The results then are evaluated

in respect of current EAM literature and approaches.

Robson (2011, p.237) defines eight steps for

designing and conducting a survey.

The following research questions were

identified:

RQ1: Do SME have a defined awareness

of EAM?

RQ2: To which degree do they already

have implemented EAM?

Data collection was realized by means of a

questionnaire. Due to the fact to enable a wide

distribution in a given time frame, an internet based

questionnaire was designed.

Since EAM activity in SME are investigated

independently from their related industry sector, the

survey’s population is small and medium-sized

enterprises. According to the survey’s intention a

non-probability sample was used. Next to being

213

Wißotzki M., Timm F. and Sonnenberger A..

A Survey on Enterprise Architecture Management in Small and Medium Enterprises.

DOI: 10.5220/0005339602130220

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2015), pages 213-220

ISBN: 978-989-758-098-7

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

SME no other condition was applied for

participation. Nevertheless, SMEs’ top-level

managements were asked to answer the

questionnaire. In order to reach as many SMEs as

possible, snowball sampling was applied. (cf.

Browne 2005) Initially only SMEs known to the

authors were addressed and asked to distribute the

survey to other SMEs. Consequently, most

participators were located in Germany. The

questionnaire was distributed through

www.soscisurvey.de

, a free platform for online

surveys and provides exporting the data in SPSS

format.

3 STATE OF THE ART

In this section the most important concepts of this

work are introduced as they are used by the author.

These results are based on a prior conducted

literature review. (blinded)

3.1 Small and Medium-sized

Enterprises

Enterprises are complex and highly integrated

systems comprised of processes, organizations,

information and technologies, with interrelationships

and –dependencies in order to reach common goals.

(Razavi, Aliee, Badie, 2010, p.449ff.) Depending on

the context, enterprises can be classified by

quantitative and qualitative criteria.

The European Commission (2012-06-05) defines

enterprises up to 250 employees with a yearly

business volume of up to 50 million Euro or a

balance sheet total of up to 43 million Euro as to

SME. This paper uses the less restrictive definition

of medium-sized enterprises by the German institute

for SME research. Here, enterprises are considered

medium-sized with less than 500 employees.

(Institut für Mittelstandsforschung Bonn, 2012-06-

23)

Qualitative characteristics are used for further

analysis of the enterprises. They are used as entry

points for discussions and comparisons. (Müller,

2009)To build the basis for the discussion of theory

and practice in section 5, a number of such criteria

relevant for SME are given.

The entrepreneur and owner of a small enterprise

is often working in his own company. In medium-

sized enterprises this task is often replaced and

augmented by other activities like making decisions,

http://www.soscisurvey.de, 2014-01-28

depending on the amount of information about the

environment, the risks and chances. As a result the

decision processes of SME are often highly

centralized. SME are typically characterized as

enterprises with flat hierarchies, non-bureaucratic

structures, limited resources (personnel and

financial), operating in specific corners of the

market or having a specific customer base, and the

absence of fixed processes. The day-to-day business

is specialized, but flexible to change based on the

requirements of individual customers. Furthermore

SME are often more focused on the operational

planning and controlling than strategic aspects. The

use of controlling instruments is often limited. In

addition there is a big difference between the

knowledge about the importance of such

management models and the implementation of

concrete measures. (Dörner, Rohde, 2009; Kardel,

2011; Mayer, 2011; Müller, 2009) While this criteria

does not apply to every SME, statistics have shown

that the majority of SME fit them. (Legenhausen,

1998)

3.2 Enterprise Architecture

No common definition of the term EA has emerged

yet. Nevertheless the term Enterprise Architecture is

widely distributed and accepted in science and

practice. EA is commonly used if enterprise-wide IT

systems have to be aligned with business processes.

(Ahlemann et al., 2012; Goethals, 2006)

Enterprises focus on both cost efficiency and

flexibility of the IT systems. There is interest in the

long-term existence of IT systems since IT is a

major element of costs and added value. (Hafner,

2006) There are persistent interrelations between

organizational issues and IT. To stay competitive in

providing business services, these have to be

identified. (Lankhorst, 2013, Durst, 2006)

Models are developed to identify the complex

dependencies within business and IT alignment.

These interactions between business processes and

information systems must be documented on all

business levels. Therefore, EA models the elements,

roles, responsibilities, systems, and their relations.

(Alaeddini, Salekfard, 2011)

EA is the amount of different smaller

architectures. The Open Group divides it into

business, data, application and technical

architecture. The specific implementation of EA is

derived from a rich set of framework models and the

economic situation. ( The Open Group, 2011,

Lankhorst, 2013)

The EA should contain strategic, organizational

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and technical aspects as well as their interrelations.

These aspects, its tools and effects have to be

documented, consciously selected, monitored and

maintained. (Targowski, 2003)

3.3 Enterprise Architecture

Management

Ahlemann et al. (2012) describe the management of

EA as a separate management discipline. The main

challenges of EAM are understanding, controlling

and managing complex EA and its implementations.

(Rüter et al., 2010) EAM constitutes the process of

the creation, documentation and long-term

development of the Enterprise Architecture. The

central task of EAM is active and target-oriented

structuring due to changes of the EA. (Ahlemann et

al. 2012; Lankhorst, 2013)

The expense and complexity of introducing

EAM as well as the first documentation is a central

problem for a variety of reasons All these difficulties

can be handled, but the management should be

aware of them, especially in the context of SME.

EAM is implemented due to growing IT-

landscapes, internal (e.g. mergers) and external

business factors, as well as increasing complexity

caused by information technological, economic and

social changes. (Matthes, 2011; Lankhorst, 2013)

EAM in SME

The expense of implementing EAM is affected

by the company´s size. In general decisions can be

made easier in small and medium-sized enterprises.

Decisions on the architecture are made by

specialized architects or architecting departments. In

SME such resources will not be available.

Regarding EAM in SME there only has been few

research so far. (blinded) In order to support the

transition process of growing SMEs (Jacobs et al.

2011) developed the SME EA Growth Model

(SMEAG) by dint of case study research. The model

enhances existing growth stage models by

combining EA principles for change management,

EA frameworks and operational models for business

execution. By mapping several areas of concern (e.g.

organizational structure) to stages of growth the

work of (Jacobs et al. 2011) reveals that EA

facilitates growth triggered transition for SME. The

need for standardizations and integration of

processes in the several growth stages becomes more

transparent. This motivates this work to contribute in

research for EAM in SMEs.

4 SURVEY DESIGN

This section describes the design of the

questionnaire. According to RQ1 and RQ2 the main

goals are the SMEs’ knowledge about EAM, its

current degree of implementation and perceived

relevance of EAM models and its tools for the

participants. As described in section 2 an online

survey was conducted. A written questionnaire

requires clear and unambiguous questions and

answers to minimize confusion and reduce the time

for taking this survey. (Lewis, Thornhill, 2009) The

purpose of the questionnaire was to identify the need

and importance of EAM for small and medium-sized

enterprises. Based on the individual answers the

degree of implementation should be identified. This

points out how much EAM is already part of the

business thinking in SME. As secondary goals for

the questionnaire general questions about the

business structure as well as the use of architecture

and business tools are asked. The industry sectors of

invited companies were wide-spread. The survey

was anonymous. The questionnaire was accessible

via link for 21 days from the 2012-06-11till 2012-

07-01. The contact data was provided by online

trade dictionaries. Overall there are 89 responses of

the 355 distributed invitations to take part of the

survey, resulting in an effective response rate of

25%.

Table 1: Department of the Respondent.

Answer Responses

% of

Responses

% of

Cases

CEO/ Management 43 31% 73%

Personnel Department 12 7% 20%

Accounting 9 5% 15%

Finances 6 3% 10%

Legal department 9 5% 15%

Research and development 10 5% 17%

Manufacturing/Production 9 5% 15%

Quality assurance 11 6% 19%

Safety 3 2% 5%

Public Relations 5 3% 9%

Marketing department 14 8% 24%

IT 13 7% 22%

Hardware and technology

administration

5 3% 9%

Sales/ Distribution 13 7% 22%

Logistics/ Materials 6 3% 10%

Customer Service 13 7% 22%

Property Management 2 1% 3%

Other 3 2% 5%

Total 186 100% 315%

The participation of organizational departments is

shown in table 1 (multiple selection due to the

possible combination of departments).

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The questionnaire contains of maximum 58

questions (depending on optional and filter

questions) and took about 12 to 15 minutes in

general. The questionnaire was structure into nine

logical parts as follows. The general part asked

questions about the respondent and its enterprise’s

organization. Then, the enterprise’s current state of

EAM was identified. The fourth part measured the

respondent’s understanding of EAM and its

perceived importance. In the subsequent part the

organizational aspects regarding planning and

implementing EAM were investigated, before

identifying EAM’s process instantiation in the

enterprise. Next, the respondents were asked,

whether their enterprise uses means of cooperate

governance and addresses risk management. In the

end of the questionnaire the participants were asked,

for which purposes they would use EAM and

whether they actually use tools and methods for

business performance measurement.

5 SURVEY EVALUATION

As recommended by the questionnaire the survey

was answered mostly by personnel of the top-level

management, the IT department and rarely the

middle management. For companies that do not have

departments the functional position can still be

converted into an equivalent department. The

distribution of age, centred at an age more than 40

years, reflects that for such a position skills,

knowledge and life experiences are needed.

The assessment of the classification by company

size is realistic: 57% were correctly classified as

small, 34% as medium-sized and only 9% as

intermediate forms. This agrees with the proportion

of the respondents with 57% small enterprises and

42% medium-sized enterprises. The proportion of

small enterprises in the study is much higher than

the proportion of companies having departments.

This illustrates that even small enterprises are

introducing structuring elements for management.

15% of the 59 companies with departments have

more than 40 employees in the department of the

respondent. These companies are unlikely to be

small. The majority (39%) have up to 5 employees

in the department of the respondent. It can be

assumed that the small companies belong to this

group due to their maximum employee number of

less than 50.

The participating companies are mostly active in

IT, telecommunications, consulting and trade. More

than half of them operate in a single country. Table 2

demonstrates that the rest mostly operates on one or

more continents.

Table 2: Markets of Companies.

Answer

No. of

Respondents

% of

Respondents

One specific country 48 56%

Worldwide 4 5%

Combination of continents 26 30%

The structural EA components are mostly planned

and decided on by the top-level management. 36%

already have specific positions for an architect.

Efficiency, actuality and effectiveness of EA

elements are rarely analyzed and controlled. The

business operations are mostly semi-automated

supported by IT. This seems to be related to the

characteristics of SME: the majority of enterprises is

private or family owned and for the majority the

business owner is also the manager. Therefore all

risks and difficulties come back to the manager and

owner, who is working towards handling the

important tasks like management, supplier selection

as well as sales and marketing.

The majority of SME define the structural EA

components (operational processes, responsibilities,

IT systems, strategies, development condition) and

about half of them implement them at least partially.

Based on that, it is obvious that some small

enterprises plan ahead in a well-organized fashion.

More than half of the responding enterprises

support this understanding of architectural elements

and business operations by enterprise-wide

arrangements for planning, implementing and

monitoring. The arrangement between appropriate

departments and the IT department seems to depend

on the specific tasks. Management is becoming more

and more interested in such an implementation. The

elements, necessary to implement the EA

components, have to be coordinated and planned.

The understanding of management is influenced by

two factors. First, SME have to continue to work on

schedule to satisfy their customers, even if there is a

lack of fixed processes and production procedures.

Second, the management understanding is adopting

many of the recommendations like controlling,

maintaining and the coordination of specific parts.

Nevertheless the processes and responsibilities are

mostly revised as required. 59% of the responded

companies do have at least one person for the

management besides the CEO, but a two-third

majority does not distinguish between different

management disciplines like Business or IT

Management. Management does not consider IT a

priority as they tend to bring in external specialists

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or use standardized tools with the promise of taking

care of the tasks. Business Management is

understood as the alignment of capacities and orders,

processes and timespans, personnel and

developments. Typical controlling elements like

cost-benefit-accounting are used. Specialized tools

like Corporate Planner are the exception.

Furthermore the costs and efforts for introducing

such tools scare many companies, especially given

the limited resources. Tools and methods should be

flexible and adaptable (e.g. for different production

lines).

EAM is understood as part of the strategic

management needed to coordinate corporate and IT

strategy effectively. (Ahlemann et al. 2012) It is

helpful for clear responsibilities, clear structure

models and the formalization and simplification of

processes reaching transparency and

competitiveness.

The relevance of IT and EA in general is

independent of the age of the respondent, even if

both fields are comparatively new developments.

This is also reflected by businesses declaring their

goals and the corporate philosophy.

IT is a determining factor of organizations and

the management. It have to be used in the current

century. It was originally assumed that IT systems

are generally well-defined and controlled. The

survey cannot support this assumption. The majority

of responding companies have undefined IT

landscapes, but assess their preparation for dealing

with IT risks as medium to well. At first this seems

to be paradoxical, but it does not have to. There are

many standardized software products that include

protection mechanism (e.g. the Windows Firewall)

without user involvement. This agrees with the

annual or irregular revision schedule of the systems.

Backup and restore concepts and systems are often

bought as integrated solutions.

The loss of key personnel is considered as a

major problem due to the limited number of

employees in the companies, the expert knowledge

of specific positions and the decreasing flexibility to

take these tasks.

As a conclusion the responding enterprises are

open-minded towards the usage of EA as well as

EAM to reach a long-term conceivable, integrated

architecture of structuring and developing. Their

commitment is demonstrated by working more and

more on defining and fixing their elements and

operations, even if the analysis of them is still

insufficient. According to the distribution of small

and medium enterprises, the development of

architecture positions even in small companies can

be recognized. Unfortunately many of the available

management disciplines and their tools are not

targeted towards SME or are not seen as candidates

by them. Their interest in EA and associated

methods for optimizing the daily businesses by an

integrated management is increasing. Even though

the IT systems are undefined by the majority of

companies, an alignment of IT systems and business

processes is considered when benefits are

recognized. Therefore it is not surprising that the

provided capability to meet this commitment is

rarely undeveloped. SME are aware of costs and

efforts, as well as doing essential tasks on their own

and certainly not fully automated by IT support. The

development is heading into the right direction by

defining architects and believing in the use of tools

that are flexible enough to adapt them to industry

sectors, markets, targets or skills.

6 DISCUSSION

This section tries to compare theory (section 3) and

practice (section 4). The importance of small and

medium-sized enterprises for the economy must be

stressed because most of the employees are working

in this kind of companies. They are an important and

large factor for the markets and the economical

balance. For example, the vast majority of

employees, about 99%, in Germany work in small

and medium enterprises. (Legenhausen, 1998)

Research question 2 of this study was whether

small and medium-sized enterprises have adapted

the use of EAM. For this purpose it is important to

understand what EAM is about and how it should be

modified for SME (RQ1). The second issue is, what

difficulties SME face when introducing EAM.

For the first issue (RQ1) it must to be stressed

that EAM as an integrated management of

enterprise-wide elements (e.g. processes) and the

corporate components (e.g. strategy) is an accepted

method for large enterprises. Business activities and

the supporting IT have to be aligned. Based on the

literature, the characteristics of large enterprises are

quite different than the ones of SME. This results in

the need to adapt the management aspects and tools

to the interest, capabilities and possibilities of SME.

As written in section 3, SME are characterized by

flat hierarchies, limited resources, the absence of

fixed processes and operating in specific corners of

the market with a specific customer base. The study

agrees with that by showing that not all of the

responded companies have departments (table 3),

choosing a combination of fields of activity and

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being aware of efforts and costs to support their

daily business.

Table 3: Share of Having Departments.

Answer

No. of

Respondents

% of

Respondents

Yes 59 69%

No 27 31%

But there is a clear tendency of introducing an

integrated management by fixing the corporate

components in writing and defining the EA

elements, even if the majority just implemented

them at least particularly. Almost half of them

already use tools for business planning and having a

specific architect position seems to become more

prevalent. The questions relating the corporate

culture show that the companies are informed about

structuring and developing the organization.

Surprisingly the study highlights a gap between

undefined and defined and fully implemented IT

systems.

To what extent the EAM elements are defined

and already implemented is shown in table 4.

Operational processes, responsibilities, IT systems,

strategies as well as planning and implementing

development conditions are mentioned as EAM

elements.

Table 4: Structural Definition of EAM Elements.

Answer

No. of

Respondents

% of

Respondents

Defined but not implemented 4 5%

Defined and particularly

implemented

47 55%

Defined and implemented 25 29%

Undefined 10 12%

As explained in the survey evaluation this might be

correlated to the oversupply and standardization of

IT systems. This can result in growing IT landscapes

with an associated hidden cost for the daily business.

This is the strongest motivation for introducing

EAM. In short, SME are adaptable to use EAM.

The limitations are based on the SME

characteristics. It is often mentioned that they are

aware of the resources needed, the effort to select,

implement and maintain such architectures, as well

as the guarantee of benefits. All these doubts are

substantial for the SME perspective. The cost-

benefit ratio has to be right. If companies are just

taking input to introduce such tools and the business

is not getting more efficient, the investment was

useless. As a result, the benefits have to be made

clearer and the willingness of SME to invest into

such tools should increase.

In accordance to the empirical study, the

companies are demonstrating commitment in an

advanced stage (RQ2). Defining elements and

corporate components gain in importance. 77% of

the responding companies believe that the

importance of EA increased in the recent years.

Three-third of the responded rate the importance of

EA for business success as medium to high. The

awareness of costs and efforts captures the

underdeveloped capability to meet this commitment.

The willingness to fully implement EAM is there.

An introduction of enterprise-wide management can

be recognized, but it is still unsystematic and

unstructured.

According to the second issue, the difficulties

SME face when introducing EAM are efforts and

costs they have to spend on defining and

implementing the specific elements, their alignment

and maintenance. The willingness to invest needs to

be improved.

Especially for medium-sized enterprises the

EAM has an increasing importance due to the role of

IT and the increased need of international

competitiveness. This is explained by the large

amount of information for production and value

chain processes, environmental changes and

developments as well as increasing international

operations. Underestimating the gains in efficiency

by the management, integrating EAM into the

specific organization inhibit the implementation.

(Mannmeusel, 2012) Finally, the respondents

characterized their understanding of supporting

EAM aspects by the answers illustrated in table 5.

Table 5: Characterization of EAM by SMEs.

Answer

% of

Respondents

Clear responsibilities 21%

Competitiveness 13%

Clear structured models 12%

Transparency 12%

Formalization &simpliﬁcation of processes 11%

Need of management for controlling and

adapting

Impact on the economics 6%

Quality assurance tool 6%

Tool to address speciﬁc objectives 4%

Independence from external inﬂuences 3%

Tools of business management

independently of speciﬁc business objectives

only usable & interpretable within the

company

Once developed, eternally usable 1%

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7 LIMITATIONS

This work is limited by the selected literature

sources due to being available at our University

network, Springer Link database or the World Wide

Web.

The empirical study is limited by its timeframe to

access the online link. The study was done over a

timeframe of 21 days. This duration was chosen to

get a reasonable response rate. A longer timeframe

might have provided additional responses.

The enterprises were selected based on personal

and business contacts. To provide additional

responses a few well known regional companies

were contacted. A more thorough list of enterprises

could have been created by systematically going

over business contact directory, but such cold calls

generally have a small response rate. This could be

facilitated by dint of probability sampling designs.

The covered industry sectors are naturally

limited by the aforementioned selection. The

distribution of business sizes is 57% small and 34%

medium enterprises. This balance could be tipped in

either direction by changing the selection process.

The survey was published only in German and

English. This is explained by the origin of the

invited companies. It is assumed that the language

selection is comprehensive and provides no

unnecessary barrier.

8 CONCLUSIONS

The results of the survey form the basis of this work.

The terms relevant for understanding the topic are

defined. As an introduction into the field of EAM

the theoretical basis is created. According to the

empirical study done in this paper the adaptability of

an integrated management as EAM is explained and

evaluated.

The study shows that the usage of EAM is often

incorrectly focused only on IT by literature sources.

In contrast there is already knowledge about the

importance of processes, strategies and

organizational aspects in practice. The connection

between business-focused and IT-focused managing

has to be established in consideration to the dynamic

environment, the changing markets and structural

changes within the companies.

SME are struggling with the basis of

organizational structuring like selecting and leading

personnel, the alignment of processes to the

timespans of orders to be accomplished and

increasing bureaucracy.

The overwhelming offer of tools and methods,

always promising benefits without efforts and costs

results in many companies to two facts. At first, the

supporting management tasks are currently carried

on their own. At second, companies are increasingly

aware of the available tools.

9 OUTLOOK

The study identified a number of issues requiring

further research. The findings of this work need to

be extended by validating the survey’s results, which

could be facilitated by a next deepening survey in

SME industries.

Furthermore, this study could be extended to

focus more strongly on small enterprises, or only on

medium-sized enterprises. A comparison of

independent evaluations for the different size classes

could clarify the transitions and restrictions of

implementing EAM.

Another topic is clarifying the borders and

transitions between different management

disciplines to point out the importance of EAM in

comparison to the other ones. The challenges and

advantages of EAM in comparison to single

management systems in an enterprise could be

stressed; unambiguous definitions of them are

essential to be made. Furthermore the understanding

and usage of EAM by SME could be directly

compared to large companies as part of an empirical

study.

The changing attitude of SME is also a

promising topic. The characteristics of ownership or

hierarchies cannot be eliminated that fast, but some

of the criteria might be in change like the definition

of elements and corporate components, as well as

the increasing interest in supporting tools and the

decreasing focus on IT systems. This means that the

classic preconception about SME may no longer be

valid.

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