The Business Case for SOA

Recent Accenture research shows that high-performance companies are twice as likely as their competitors to use service-oriented architecture. Nevertheless, convincing a C-suite collectively suffering from technology fatigue that service-oriented architecture provides solid business benefits, remains a challenge. This article explores strategies to overcome that challenge.

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Much hype has surrounded service-oriented architecture (SOA), but this has not convinced C-suite executives that service-oriented architecture can help them meet their pressing business challenges.

Top executives are under pressure to improve financial performance and they are suffering from the frustration caused by years of cost cutting. This makes differentiating their companies from competitors that much harder.

For many years, Accenture has been researching the characteristics that underlie high performance, with recent research indicating that high-performance businesses are twice as likely as their competitors to use SOA. They also employ SOA strategically to enhance their distinctive capabilities and gain competitive advantage.

However, chief information officers are finding it hard to convince fellow C-suite executives suffering from technology fatigue that SOA can help them to overcome the challenges they face.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) allows businesses to assemble and disassemble new applications across operating platforms easily and inexpensively.

This means that line managers using SOA will be able to design and control their own business processes.

Hints of SOA's potential have been glimpsed for nearly two decades, but several factors are converging to position SOA as a generator of lasting strategic value:

• Computer-processing power has exploded to the point where it can accommodate the applications.
  
  
• Relatively clean data are available from enterprise resource planning systems and business intelligence systems, allowing managers to act on the data being developed.
  
  
• Organizations now have a generation and a half of business people who are comfortable with technology, and IT staff that are not isolated anymore.
  
  
• Large enterprise resource planning vendors such as Oracle and SAP have put their weight behind SOA.
  

To sell the service-oriented architecture (SOA) story to other C-suite executives, the following steps should be followed:

• Demonstrate early wins: Show chief executive officers proof that SOA is working in their businesses.
  
  
• Frame up the business benefits: With the CEO's interest piqued, the IT leader should present a metrics-based benefits case for an enterprise-wide SOA push.
  
  
• Hit the hot buttons: Explain that business managers will have control over applications and work processes.
  
  
• Roll out the road map: Provide a clear path to further engagement.
  
  
• Paint vivid pictures of how SOA can change the game: Describe how SOA can make a significant difference to a current or imminent business initiative.
  
  
• Sketch out a proposal for new governance mechanisms: Explain that effective SOA governance can help build a solid library of services and foster their reuse.
  
  
• Speak to the new skills needed by business managers: Focus on new competencies that business managers need in an SOA-enabled world.

Jeanne Harris is director of research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business.

David Nichols is an executive partner at Accenture and the global SOA practice lead.