ComTech is a diversified, multi-profile company. Essentially, it is a conglomerate company consisting
of three diverse strategic units acting as independent businesses under separate brands in different
industry sectors: Unit Alpha, Unit Beta and Unit Gamma. ComTech is governed from the central head
office, which oversights the three subsidiary business units and their financial performance
indicators, though without any operational interventions. Each strategic business unit has its own
managing director with full discretion and responsibility over its competitive strategy, investment
priorities, budget allocation and ensuing yearly profits.
Unit Alpha is in the food manufacturing business. The unit produces and distributes a variety of
goods including, but not limited to, vegetables, groceries, meat and dairy products. Each of these
product lines requires unique production processes, storage arrangements, transportation
approaches and underlying equipment and is organizationally implemented by a separate
specialized product department. However, these products are delivered largely to the same circle of
customers, including both major retailers and local food shops. All product lines are also served by a
number of common unit-wide functions, e.g. HR, finance, accounting, logistics, legal, marketing and
sales support.
Unit Beta competes in the restaurant business with 78 IT staff. Specifically, the unit controls a chain
of small fast-food restaurants occupying the low-cost market niche. In total, the chain includes more
than 80 restaurants located in different geographies and more restaurants are planned to be opened
in the foreseeable future. All restaurants offer same interiors, menus, prices, meals and services to
their customers and imply standardized policies, working procedures and supporting equipment.
However, each restaurant is run separately by a chief manager responsible for its overall financial
well-being and all necessary business processes, e.g. recruiting, training, procurement, cooking,
servicing, cleaning and complaints management. With the exception of Unit Beta’s lean central
office, where chain-wide branding, marketing and other strategic decisions are made, the
restaurants operate independently from each other and even have their own profit and loss
statements.
Finally, Unit Gamma runs a chain of resort hotels. These hotels gravitate towards the high-end price
segment and offer premium-quality services to their customers. Unit Gamma’s competitive strategy
implies improving its brand recognition and achieving consistent customer experience. For this
purpose, the unit’s leadership plans to standardize all customer-facing and, to a lesser extent, backoffice processes across all hotels of the chain as well as all its suppliers and service providers.
Moreover, Unit Gamma also intends to become “closer” to its customers and build lifelong customer
relationships. This strategy requires collecting more information about customers, their individual
preferences and transaction histories, aggregating this information globally and leveraging it for
providing customized services, launching loyalty programs, developing special offers and promoting
personalized discounts.
As an EA manager at Comtech, you are required to write a report that discusses the following:
- Describe five major roles that STANDARD as EA Artifacts will play in SmartT.
- Discuss how solution designs as an EA Artifacts should be implemented in Unit Gamma
- What are the four responsibilities of architecture functions in SmartT?
- Based on IT staff ratio model and degree of decentralization as a factor, name and discuss
architects positions that would be required in Unit Beta