Abstract—Organisations rely on information and
communication technologies (ICT) as an essential part of their
operations, as well as providing strategic advantage. Enterprise
architecture (EA) is a function within an organisation to
maximise return on investment of ICTs, and to ensure that the
Information Systems (IS) function in the organisation is not a
bottleneck for organisational growth and agility. This study
surveyed small and large organisations in South Africa, to
determine what the impact (and value) of the IS architecture
and maturity of the IS function is on the business processes and
the organisation as a whole. We also compared larger versus
smaller organisations as well as informative-intensive versus
non information-intensive organisations. The key findings were
that there is a strong empirical basis for many of the claimed
benefits of EA. In particular, EA seems to facilitate business
process automation, more so (in our sample) than business
agilty. However, EA has real organisational impacts, enabling
especially long term cost reduction and enterprise agility. Also,
although the higher importance and impact of EA and ICTs in
information-intensive organisations was confirmed,
surprisingly few significant differences were found between
large and small organisations.
Index Terms—Enterprise architecture, business process
capability, ICT impact, South Africa.
C. van Zijl was with the Department of Information Systems, University
of Cape Town. He is now with Santam, South Africa (e-mail:
Charl.VanZijl@santam.co.za).
Jean-Paul Van Belle is with the Department of Information Systems &
Director of the Centre for IT and National Development in Africa, University
of Cape Town, South Africa (e-mail: Jean-Paul.VanBelle@uct.ac.za).
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Cite: Charl Van Zijl and Jean-Paul Van Belle, "Organisational Impact of Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Capability in South African Organisations," International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance vol.5, no.5, pp. 405-413, 2014.