SNA Technologies
Bridging the Gap between EA and Implementation

Of late, organizations have taken a keen interest in Enterprise Architecture (EA). “An organizational structure that considers the enterprise as a single entity is the secret to effective business process optimization,” states Suresh Done, CEO, SNA Technologies. The holistic view of EA is transforming many CIOs as strategic members of their organizations, align IT to deliver business objectives. “CIOs are being ushered into a new role alongside the CEOs,” he adds. In addition, legacy processes and technology frameworks are hindrances that many organizations are confronting at various levels in the development spectrum.

Fortunately, the evolution of EA for comprehensive IT implementations is fulfilling this need by bringing a holistic view. Armed with proprietary reference architectures, SNA is adept at EA and technology consulting that drive businesses towards achieving their goals. “We help organizations develop capabilities in terms of vision and implementation of enterprise architecture,” says Done.

“We help organizations develop capabilities in terms of vision and implementation of enterprise architecture”

SNA balances between standardization and innovation. SNA builds on already existing standards and innovates if necessary to get the competitive advantage. “Taking right decisions at the right time and more importantly taking the right approach is crucial for the success of any organization,” says Done. SNA has created its own proprietary methodology TOPAgile—to bring agility to enterprise architecture development. Going a step further, the company has also developed customized versions of TOPAgile for various industries like telecom, banking, retail, government, education among others. “These reference architectures we created give a jump start for developing enterprise architectures in organizations pertaining to the respective industries,” he continues. While architecting, SNA also incorporates latest technologies like Service Oriented Architecture, cloud computing, big data, and Open Platform 3.0—elevating the organization’s integration maturity levels and ensuring seamless information flow.

With its strong base of professionals in EA and next-gen technologies, SNA is aggressively expanding the knowledge and practice of EA and its implementation. “We believe in implementation and not in mere recommendation,” emphasizes Done. This is visible in the way Done and his team deliver business capabilities to an organization. “At every stage, organizations should ensure that their processes revolve around their vision.” With this as a tenet, SNA builds a common vision across the enterprise with the creation of various scenarios, making employees as stakeholders. This practice also extends to the implementation stage where phased implementation transforms the existing state of business delivery into desired outcomes. With a significant global presence, SNA has garnered the knowledge of best practices, enabling them to create benchmarking for every client.

Finally, SNA supports operations after the implementation with operational level agreements. “Mere implementation or recommendation of EA alone will not bear fruits,” states Done. He understands that for a company to survive the rapid market changes and move forward, it needs a strong operational framework, technology infrastructure, and architecture governance model.

SNA is helping clients build an operational framework with in-house capabilities providing transitional support with external experts. And what’s more, all the three phases are interlinked with a feedback loop for continuous improvement.

Continuous Improvement and Innovation

“Process, Technology, and People are the cornerstones in the service and product delivery of any organization,” remarks Done. Quality standards across the business world have identified the need for improving the process, upgrading the technology, and revamping the operational skills of employees.

SNA optimizes business processes by integrating concepts from ISO, Capability Maturity Model Integration, Lean and Six Sigma depending on the stage and size of the organization. “We customize the process and technology change that amalgamates with existing structures. Organizations are not ready for a total overhaul due to heavy implementation costs. Hence, it is necessary to use existing competencies of the organization to take the leap,” explains Done. SNA provides a strategic roadmap to clients, keeping in view the existing competencies and talent in terms of process, technology, and people skills.

SNA is dedicated towards giving their clients a competitive advantage. “Continuous improvement and innovation are the prime factors to beat the competition and meet the changing needs of customers,” says Done. Every time SNA builds the maturity model of an organization, it revolves around these two aspects to ensure companies are responsive to change. Furthermore, SNA has introduced a course called Solution Architecture to bridge the gap between process, technology, and change to transform organizations—empowering them to achieve the desired delivery of services and products. This will help architects implement and operationalize the ‘vision’ of EA and identify the right solution.

Leveraging EA, SNA assists organizations unearth the right innovation strategy to be either aggressive or passive, based on market and economic conditions. “We help organizations thrive on a continuous improvement process to survive the tough, evolving, and uncertain market conditions,” says Done. SNA has expertise in risk management to mitigate risk from a business transformation and implementation perspective. SNA helps their clients to take the right decisions by factoring all their business transformation risks. The customer-centricity of SNA is one to be highlighted—SNA researches into the methodologies, frameworks, and solutions on a regular basis and applies them to its solutions in the most customized and economical manner. On one occasion, SNA helped a client consolidate their infrastructure by using the right taxonomy so that their infrastructure is categorized better and their technology stack is standardized. “The implementation largely leveraged the already existing technology stack and only incrementally upgraded it to the new frameworks,” he adds. This reduced the client’s operational cost by 30 to 50 percent.

With a huge global footprint in the implementation of various architectures and solutions for the organizational development, Done says, “Our next step is to strengthen SNA’s quality of services and solutions. We find the government sector relatively more fascinating as it supports millions of citizens in all countries.” Being a philanthropist himself, Done is committed to providing services to the public sector that will result in better quality of life for every citizen. Aside from quite a few exciting EA projects for government sector in the pipeline, SNA is on a mission to help every organization that is in need of improvement and development. “Our steadfast research into frameworks will better position SNA for the future,” concludes Done.