Organisations everywhere are under pressure to transform — to become more customer-centric, digital-first, and data-driven. But for many, the path forward is blocked by a familiar set of challenges:
- A portfolio of aging, siloed applications
- Business data trapped in legacy systems
- Rising expectations for convenience, transparency, and responsiveness
- Constraints on growing the total cost of IT
It’s easy to see why a cloud platform is attractive. Most enterprise applications—no matter the industry—revolve around common capabilities: managing customer data, orchestrating workflows, enabling digital engagement, handling cases, and exchanging information securely. So why not combine these on a shared platform?
This is a powerful idea. But it won’t succeed unless it’s guided by business architecture.
The Pitfall: Rebuilding Silos in the Cloud
Technology platform pitches can be enticing, often with glossy demos, industry accelerators, and impressive roadmaps. But here’s the problem: if you don’t start with the business, you’ll simply recreate your silos in a new digital wrapper.
To avoid this, organisations need to take a step back and understand their value chain: the end-to-end business processes that deliver value to customers. From there, it’s possible to identify:
- Common process patterns
- Shared information entities
- Reusable technology building blocks
These insights form the basis for a platform that’s not just technically sound, but strategically aligned to how your organisation creates value.
A Case Study: Modernising Government Services with a Platform Approach
We have been supporting a government department undertaking a major digital transformation. The organisation is comprised of federated business units, many of which operated under distinct legislation and had developed their own legacy systems over time.
Rather than continuing to build point solutions, the agency committed to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform as the foundation for a unified digital capability. But the success of this move came not from the technology alone — it came from how we approached it.
Our role as Enterprise Architects was to ensure the platform rollout was driven by business needs, not vendor blueprints. Key elements of the engagement included:
- Mapping business capabilities to platform products: Using a business capability model to identify where shared solutions could meet multiple needs.
- Defining solution blueprints: Outlining the core architecture and governance model for Line-of-Business implementations.
- Creating use case libraries: Capturing common needs and linking them to licensing and technology components.
- Establishing demo environments: Giving business teams sandpits to explore and refine the design before committing to build.
- Aligning with organisational design: Ensuring platform decisions reflected the autonomy and needs of federated units while promoting reuse and consistency.
The result was a clear transition roadmap, a scalable architecture, and the empowerment of internal teams to deliver value through the platform, without reinventing the wheel each time.
Start with the Business, Not the Vendor
Cloud platforms can be powerful enablers. But a platform is not a strategy — it’s a tool.
To drive real transformation:
- Start with business architecture.
- Understand your customer journeys and value chains.
- Identify common patterns and capabilities.
- Define technology building blocks that are reusable and scalable.
- Address organisational design alongside process and technology.
A platform strategy grounded in this approach can unlock agility, reduce duplication, and deliver value at speed, without blowing out IT budgets.
Take Away
You don’t need to rebuild your legacy systems in the cloud. You need to reimagine them, guided by business architecture, powered by platforms, and focused on outcomes.
Contact us today to learn more about how our Digital & ICT Advisory team can help you achieve your cloud migration goals.