Role of hospitality and leisure managers in enterprise architecture, technology sourcing, data analytics, and data management

Introduction

This chapter puts a spotlight on three capabilities that we contend are the most important building blocks for operating and competing as a digital business, besides people. The first, enterprise architecture management, relates to how the organization’s technology infrastructure, information/data, and business processes are and should be configured. The second, technology sourcing, relates to how an organization goes about finding, choosing, and procuring the technologies and related services to be added as components of its enterprise architecture. The third, data management and data analytics, relates to an organization’s ability to collect, validate, store, and leverage data to spur data-driven decision making. Taken together, the organization's ability to effectively build and manage these capabilities can expand or constrain its efficiency, differentiation, adaptability, and agility. This effect can be supercharged through the capacity of these capabilities to catalyze all other digital transformation and digital business capabilities. Effectively establishing and continuously upgrading the competitiveness of these capabilities requires organization-wide improvement, and cascades as an important part of managers’ roles at all levels (i.e. vertically up and down the hierarchy and horizontally across functions). We unpack the types of roles leaders can play in each capability and the types of competencies required to effectively play those roles.

Required managerial roles and competencies for enterprise architecture management and technology sourcing

Unpacking enterprise architecture

Enterprise architecture (EA) refers to the design or configuration of the different elements/ assets of an organization (e.g. hardware, software, networks, business processes, information systems, information, data) and the resultant levels of efficiency, effectiveness, and longevity they enable an organization to have in the pursuit of its mission within its external environment. For example, one particular design or configuration may lead to mediocre levels of efficiency and effectiveness in the pursuit of the organization’s mission (e.g. perhaps due to having a random collection of disparate hardware, software, networks, business processes, and information/data that don’t work well together — thus constraining connectivity, communication, collaboration, and customer experience). For an organization like the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, for example, such enterprise architecture would severely limit its mission of providing guests with the finest personalized service

Architecture, technology sourcing, analytics 89 and experience,¹ and would, in turn, limit its longevity. Another type of design or configuration might be suited to maximizing connectivity, integrability, communication, collaboration, automation, adaptability, and customer experience, resulting in very high levels of efficiency and effectiveness. We contend that the latter is the type of enterprise architecture that leading digital businesses like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Netflix have. Enterprise architecture has had simpler (although perhaps less complete) definitions, including that it is the process of aligning an organizations strategic vision with its information technology,² that it is how information/business/technology flow together,³ and that it is the organizing logic for how business processes and IT infrastructure should work together to meet operational requirements.⁴

Enterprise architecture is described as being layered (i.e. having business architecture, information architecture, information systems architecture, data architecture, and delivery architecture layers), as spanning the entire organization (i.e. vertically up and down the hierarchy and horizontally across business functions), as both conceptual and physical (i.e. being a visual or written logical representations or being the actual elements/assets), as iterative (i.e. built or evolving over time through iterative additions/improvements), and as both current and forward looking (i.e. that EA designs or configurations deal with both current and future business needs). According to practitioners and researchers, good enterprise architecture should enable both current and future strategy (e.g. operational effectiveness, business transformation),'’ be proactive (i.e. anticipate and prepare for the future needs of the business),⁶ speed up processes (e.g. digitize, integrate, and automate key processes), enable adaptability (e.g. through plug and play digital assets that can be adapted to different internal and external systems/technologies/processes), ensure availability and accessibility of high-quality data across the enterprise to drive decision making (e.g. cleaning, standardizing, sharing, presenting data), and instantiate the organization’s digital business model.'

Enterprise architecture management

Enterprise architecture management refers to the processes and practices of planning, implementing, maintaining, and continuously improving an organizations enterprise architecture. At a high level, it involves the continuous and iterative activities of identifying EA stakeholders and their concerns, understanding the existing EA and the value it creates, designing the target EA, planning the EA implementation, transitioning to the target EA, and ensuring effective EA governance.⁸ See Table 9.1⁹ providing example EA activities and tasks and the resultant artifacts (hospitality and leisure managers may be presented with and have to interpret these artifacts by EA leaders and/or consultants). The benefits from effective EA management are broad and include the capacity for improved communication and collaboration, improved decision making, improved functional and external partner alignment, improved customer satisfaction, reduced complexity, and more. EA researchers identify more than 40 benefits of effective enterprise architecture (see Table 9.2). Given the digital business transformation and digital business imperatives, a key benefit, and the one integrating all the 40 listed benefits, is successful digital business transformation and the capacity to effectively compete as a digital business. Enterprise architecture leaders can ensure the design or configuration of and transition to architectures that simultaneously deliver efficiency, differentiation, adaptability, and agility capabilities. Although previously seen as being “either/or” choices, simultaneously having these capabilities has been shown to be essential in increasingly complex business environments.¹" "

Table 9.1 Example enterprise architecture management activities, tasks, and artifacts

Table 9.2 Benefits of effective enterprise architecture management

New or enhanced managerial roles and competencies required for effective enterprise architecture management

Hospitality and leisure managers can play a range of roles in enterprise architecture management. First, the top enterprise architecture management role can be filled by someone from the IT/IS/technology function, but who has deep operational process and industry knowledge, or by someone from operations or another functional area but who has sufficient IT/IS/technology competencies.¹² Both individuals are likely to be challenging to find and to retain. Another option is strong collaboration between someone from the IT/ IS/technology function and someone from the operations function with deep industry knowledge. So, hospitality and leisure managers can be involved in directly managing the EA function or having shared responsibility for its effectiveness.

Outside of direct or shared management of EA, hospitality and leisure managers can play other important roles. For example, they may be involved in hiring the person to directly manage the EA function, in setting or approving the EA vision and high-level objectives, in interpreting and using EA artifacts, or in identifying and/or selecting among different technology/network/hardware/software/process options. Alternatively, they may be asked to participate in EA-related discussions; they may be involved in choosing between different EA target state options; they may participate in EA governance or oversight of EA governance; or they may have to change business processes to align with chosen EA target state options. See Figure 9.1 for examples of potential hospitality and leisure manager involvement in enterprise architecture governance at different hierarchical levels of an organization. To effectively play one or more EA roles we have outlined, hospitality and leisure managers need a working understanding of enterprise architecture and enterprise architecture management (e.g. what are their aims, how do they work, what are the opportunities and challenges), they need working knowledge of EA artifacts (e.g. being

Figure 9. / Example enterprise architecture governance model

Architecture, technology sourcing, analytics 93 able to read EA plans), and they need working knowledge of different digital technologies and the strategic opportunities and risks associated with those digital technologies.