Though many organizations intervened without EAs, every firm has the strong belief that it is better to architect before creating any system. It is integrated in a coherent fashion with a proactively designed system instead of a random ad hoc and inconsistent mode.

In terms of business benefits, cost is the key factor in the meaning of Return on Investment (RoI). That is how the industry business is driven in this highly competitive IT world. EA has the opportunity to prove its value for its own stakeholders with three major benefits, ranging from tactical to strategic positions. They are as follows:

• Cost reduction by technology standardization
• Business Process Improvement (BPI)
• Strategic differentiation

In the grand scheme of cost saving strategy, technology standardization adds a lot of efficiency to create indirect benefits. Let me share my experience in this space. In one of my earlier legacy organizations, it was noticed that the variety of technologies and products were built to serve the business purpose due to historical acquisitions and mergers.

All businesses have processes; a few life examples are credit card processing, employee on-boarding, student enrollment, and so on. In this methodology, there are people involved with few steps for the particular system to get things done. During rapid business growth, the processes become chaotic, which leads to duplicate efforts across departments. In turn, stakeholders do not leverage the collaboration and cross learning.

BPI is an industry approach that is designed to support the enterprise for the realignment of the existing business operational process into the significantly improved process. It helps the enterprise to identify and adopt in a better way using industry tools and techniques.

BPI was originally designed to induce a drastic, game-changing effect on enterprise performance instead of bringing changes in incremental steps.

In the current, highly competitive market, Strategic Differentiation efforts make a firm create the perception in customers minds of receiving something of greater value than is offered by the competition. An effective differentiation strategy is the best tool to highlight a business's unique features and make it stand out from the crowd.

As the outcome of strategic differentiation, the business should realize the benefits of Enterprise Architecture investment. Also, it makes the business institute new ways of thinking to add new customer segments along with new major competitive strategies.