Enterprise Architecture for Business Network Planning: A Capability-Based Approach

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been used for planning business and IT systems capturing different aspects, including services, processes, resources, and data. To date, it has mostly been coordinated by single organisations, even if external interactions with outside organizations play an important role in developing an EA. This paper provides insights about the role of EA in business network planning through the development of a method to conceptualize a multi-partner network, which reflects new affordances opened by a digitally connected world, where shared interactions and dependencies across organizations, through business networks, are converging into cohesive network businesses. We present a five stage approach to adopt EA for business network planning by illustrating how novation requirements can be defined in integrated scenario models specifying how local roles and their set of skills (capabilities) can be substituted, extended etc. at the level of the network, such that models retain their compact form. Our method benefits from extensive insights observed through the eGovernment One-Stop Shop adopted by Australian governments (Department of Human Services and MyGov at the federal level, Service NSW and One-Stop Shop Implementation Office in Queensland Government) and also from the upstream petroleum oil and natural gas industry. This approach establishes important correspondences between the (internal) operation planning of an organization and (external) business network planning.