Mapping Business Capabilities and Functions for Digital Customer Intimacy

As introduced in the previous blog, ArchiSurance aims to build new capabilities to support its “digital customer intimacy” strategy, such as digital customer management, data‑driven insurance, data collection, and data analysis. These capabilities are highlighted in the Enterprise Studio diagram using the “highlight” feature.

Figure 1. New capabilities for Digital Customer Intimacy.

Capabilities and Business Functions

Note that business functions differ from business capabilities. A capability represents an organization’s current or desired ability, realized through people, processes, information, and technology, and focuses on specific business outcomes for strategic planning. In contrast, a business function describes the work actually performed, is explicitly managed, and is more tightly tied to the organizational structure. Each capability appears only once in a capability map, whereas the same sub‑function may appear multiple times in a functional decomposition.

When describing a baseline business architecture, the value of a capability map lies mainly in analyzing the gap between current and desired capability levels and revealing capabilities the organization already possesses but has not explicitly identified or managed. Capabilities and their levels in the target architecture provide high‑level guidance for change, forming the core of capability‑based planning.

Of course, when you map the organization’s current capabilities, the existing business functions naturally occupy a prominent position, because what you do today must be something you are able to do. Multiple business functions (along with other elements) can contribute to a single capability.

The diagram below shows the relationship between some of ArchiSurance’s major capabilities and its current business functions. The new sub‑functions are part of the two green functions shown. They can be realized by extending existing business functions (and their processes), but they may also require new functions and resources. For example, the data‑driven insurance capability and its sub‑capabilities might demand a completely new organizational unit, and underwriting, claims, and actuarial functions could undergo significant changes.

Figure 2. Capability realization.

These capabilities require appropriate resource support, including personnel with digital‑era knowledge and skills, smart devices for data collection, and the customer data itself.

The resources are realized by the core of enterprise architecture. Only a small subset of the resulting view is shown here; it is not an exhaustive list of all elements needed to implement the resources, but rather a representative example. In practice, separate views are usually created to show how individual functions and resources are realized.

Putting everything together, we can see how various assets support capabilities, and how the strategy, goals, and outcomes described in the previous blog are linked. You can further enrich the model by connecting more detailed models (e.g., BPMN processes or UML data models) to the ArchiMate architecture, simply by linking them in Enterprise Studio. This deeper insight reveals how strategic decisions affect architecture and vice versa, uncovering new options and innovations offered by your resources. Planning, executing, and controlling change across the enterprise has never been easier.

The article also provides links to community resources, social media channels, and professional groups where readers can discuss enterprise architecture, cloud computing, big data, AI, security, and related topics.