September 6, 2007

Marketing and Enterprise Architecture

In the book Marketing Insights from A to Z by Philip Kotler, the author states:

“Marketing is too often confused with selling. Marketing and selling are almost opposites…Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. Marketing is the art of creating genuine customer value. It is the art of helping your customers become better off. The marketer’s watchwords are quality, service, and value.”

Kotler goes on as follows:

“Selling starts only when you have a product. Marketing starts before a product exists. Marketing is the homework your company does to figure out what people need and what your company should offer. Marketing determines how to launch, price, distribute, and promote your product/service offerings to the marketplace. Marketing then monitors the results and improves the offering over time.

User-centric EA is based in marketing: In User-centric EA, we don’t serve up esoteric, incomprehensible, technology laden jargon filled “artifacts” that is destined to become shelfware; instead,

  • EA exists only to create genuine customer value.
  • EA is driven by the business and works for the business users.
  • EA works to understand their needs and strives diligently to fill them.
  • EA provides the enterprise with business and technology information, planning, and governance as required by the business!

The business drives the product and service offering of EA, participates in the creation of the actual EA deliverables, and provides continuous feedback to help tailor and improve the EA over time.

Just like marketing, EA must identify their customer base, discover their need set, and provide ongoing customer value so as to get, keep, and grow their customers.

Marketing is about being customer minded and so is User-centric EA.


Share/Save/Bookmark

No comments: