In an era where transformation is no longer optional, many businesses turn to external consulting organizations to optimize operations, reduce costs, or unlock new revenue streams. These engagements often promise bold strategies, detailed roadmaps, and transformational outcomes. Yet, the results frequently underwhelm.
The Problem: Strategy Without Execution Muscle
While consulting partners may bring best practices and fresh perspectives, many engagements fall short due to two core limitations:
- Organizational Constraints: Consultants may be reluctant to recommend radical changes to operating models or organizational structures—especially when the internal appetite for disruption is low. This results in incremental rather than transformational recommendations.
- Technology Blind Spots: Despite technology being a core enabler of modern business models, consulting firms (especially business-centric ones) often lack deep insight into an organization’s current-state IT architecture, systems limitations, and integration debt. As a result, proposed changes are either unimplementable or too generic to drive differentiated value.
These challenges aren’t hypothetical. Research by McKinsey suggests that 70% of large-scale transformation programs fail to meet their goals, often due to poor execution and lack of alignment between strategy and technical capability. Similarly, BCG has highlighted that technology underutilization is a key factor in stalled digital transformations.
A Better Model: Embed Enterprise Architecture from the Start
To change this trajectory, organizations must bring in their **technology leadership—specifically, a lean and business-savvy Enterprise Architecture (EA) team—**into the heart of transformation planning.
While IT delivery leaders (e.g., IT Business Heads or Product Owners) play a vital liaison role, they are often focused on delivery pipelines and stakeholder management. They may not always have the mandate—or the holistic visibility—needed to architect long-term change. That’s where EA comes in.
Enterprise Architects act as internal consultants who:
Bridge business, technology, and finance, offering a full-spectrum view of what’s possible and what’s pragmatic.
Provide critical input on current-state systems, integration points, and bottlenecks, allowing consulting partners to ground their recommendations in operational reality.
Identify and prioritize technology enablers (e.g., platform modernization, automation, or AI adoption) aligned with strategic outcomes.
Organizing Enterprise Architecture as an Internal Consulting Function
To act as a true strategic partner, Enterprise Architecture (EA) must evolve into a lean, multidisciplinary team functioning like an internal consulting and strategy group—not just a technology governance function. Rather than assigning rigid roles, the EA team should be composed of individuals who collectively bring together a diverse blend of critical skills.
1. Team Composition: Skills-Based, Cross-Functional
The EA team should bring together the following core skill areas, which can be distributed across a small team of individuals—each member bringing depth in one or more of these domains:
- Technology Leadership: Ability to assess platforms, systems, integration patterns, and technical bottlenecks at a strategic level.
- Product Thinking: Translating business outcomes into capabilities and experiences, prioritizing initiatives with clear value to users and customers.
- User Experience (UX): Ensuring that transformation outcomes improve usability, adoption, and customer satisfaction—often overlooked in enterprise initiatives.
- Financial Acumen: Modeling TCO, ROI, and cost-per-transaction metrics to prioritize the most cost-effective and impactful changes.
- Business Domain Expertise: Understanding of processes, KPIs, regulatory realities, and pain points within specific business functions.
- Enterprise Architecture: Synthesizing business, tech, and financial inputs into coherent strategies and transformation roadmaps.
The composition is flexible: a single individual may bring multiple of these skills, allowing the team to stay lean while still being effective.
This skills-based design enables the EA function to operate as a focused transformation office—small enough to be agile, yet diverse enough to be effective.
2. Engagement Model
- Partnered early in strategic or consulting engagements to shape direction, not just validate proposals.
- Serves as the connective tissue between external consultants, internal stakeholders, and delivery organizations.
- Owns current-state diagnostics, business-technology alignment, and the translation of strategies into executable technology-enabled roadmaps.
3. Mindset and Operating Principles
- Enabler, not gatekeeper: The EA team’s goal is to unlock progress—not control it.
- Business-first, tech-grounded: All recommendations tie directly to business outcomes and are underpinned by technical and financial feasibility.
- Metrics-Driven: EA must champion measurable impact—whether in cost savings, time to market, or experience improvements.
This structure positions EA to act not as a documentation team or solution review board, but as an internal strategy engine, accelerating the path from insight to impact.
Conclusion: From Advisory to Action
External consultants can be valuable partners in driving change—but without a strong internal technology ally, they often operate with blinders on. A well-structured Enterprise Architecture team provides the connective tissue between vision and execution, helping organizations avoid transformation theater and instead realize tangible outcomes.
If your business is investing in high-stakes strategy work, make sure EA has a seat at the table. Not just as a downstream reviewer—but as an upstream partner, guiding decisions from ambition to action.
Sources & Further Reading:
- McKinsey & Co: “Why Do Most Transformations Fail?”
- BCG: “Flipping the Odds for Successful Digital Transformation”
- Gartner: EA as an internal consultancy model (ask if you want this quote extracted)
Tech Canvas 