CASE STUDY
I
n the modern world, the journey to
Digital Transformation is both exciting
and daunting. Astute businesses are
forming smart Information Technology
(IT) strategies to drive better operations
and greater customer experience. For PPS,
it became clear that a comprehensive
IT strategy was required. Upon research
the company identified the architectural
approach as best suited to its industry and
sought assistance in building this plan using
best practice architectural principles.
PPS essentially wanted to create a 2020
vision. Preparing the strategy was only
part of the equation, as it would need
to be presented to PPS executives. To do
so effectively, a well-defined Enterprise
Architecture (EA) was required. At the time,
while the PPS IT team had participated in
The Open Group Architecture Framework
(TOGAF) training, they lacked the practical
experience to develop this EA on their own.
The goal was to build a plan to empower
the application of data within an intelligent
architecture, using developed infrastructure
to deliver on conceptual, logical and
physical levels.
“We were acutely aware of the need to
partner with a business that could help us
develop an accurate target state architecture
to develop this strategy,” said Avsharn
Bachoo, Chief Technology Officer at PPS. “This
need is fueled by the desire to improve.”
Established in 1941, the PPS Group is the
only mutual financial services company
in South Africa focusing exclusively on
graduate professionals. The company
provides tailor-made insurance, investment
and healthcare solutions to its members
and is an exclusive organisation of
graduate professionals.
Solution
For PPS, the Knotion approach aligned with
its strategic requirements given the changes
that were taking place inside the company.
“We successfully launched an EA function
within the group and examined ways to
effectively grow it,” said Bachoo. “Following
extensive research, we decided to outsource
to a specialist company as opposed to
building the capacity in-house.”
Marius Snel, Chief Executive Officer and
owner of Knotion, said the process began
with modelling the current PPS environment.
“Information was drawn from existing
configuration management systems,
providing the data required to create the
initial building blocks to show the current,
physical state,” he said. “Reference models
were then built to represent the target state
both conceptually and logically, based on
architectural building blocks.”
With the current environment and the
target state effectively represented,
Knotion could now map the ‘as is’ to
the ‘target’. Using colour coded visual
representations, PPS could easily identify
what should be re-used, where potential
problems were hiding, what needed to be
retired or fixed, and what they didn’t have
in place but needed.
“A gap analysis was put together to close the
gaps between the current and the target –
and this is the information that was fed into
the strategy,” added Snel.
To achieve this, Knotion used its ‘Smart
Strategy’ solution; a customised method
based on TOGAF. While this international
framework gives companies insight into
what to do, Knotion’s customised framework
tells users how to do it.
“Many companies choose a framework such
as TOGAF, as the foundation to develop their
EA capability,” said Snel.
“This is followed by customising the
framework for the organisation based on the
architects’ skills and experience. By the time
that the EA capability is up and running, a
company would have spent a significant
amount of resources already, without
showing any clear business value.”
With EAaaS, the value is derived by providing
services to develop the relevant architectures
as and when required by the client.
THE POSITIVE IMPACT KNOTION HAS
ALREADY HAD ON OUR APPLICATION
ARCHITECTURE IS THE BIGGEST
SUCCESS STORY.
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