Innovation requires a focused discipline that understands current business needs and anticipates market changes. Enterprise architecture addresses this.
Affirming this point, two speakers at a seminar titled Enterprise Architecture: The Cornerstone of Innovation gave valuable insights of how their organisation had leveraged enterprise architecture to support innovation. Held at the institute, the seminar had Kia Siang Hock, Assistant Director of the InfoComm Division at the National Library Board and Ong Leong Seng, Chief Architect and Group Director of Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Development at Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS) share their experience.
Siang Hock sharing the approach to innovation at the National Library Board, an organisation that is a flag bearer for innovation.
Siang Hock leads innovation in an organisation that is a flag bearer for innovation. In 2000, National Library Board obtained the patent for the electronic library management system. The board’s use of technology to spearhead change has been extensively documented in business case studies by distinguished institutions such as the Harvard, Yale and INSEAD.
Working with three solutions architects, Siang Hock is responsible for deliberating new service concepts for the board as well as developing or coordinating the development of proof of concept for innovations. This is a colossal task for an organisation that has won many awards for its innovative use of technology to create an outstanding array of library services and resources that are convenient, accessible and relevant.
Siang Hock took the audience through how the National Library Board accomplished it. He also laid out the goals the organisation had set itself when innovating as well as the approach the board had taken, that is: To build an agile and adaptive architecture in tandem with growth, just in time and just enough.
At IHiS, Leong Seng has a task that is no less daunting. As Chief Architect, he drives the innovations that transform patient care in Singapore. His team of six architects develops and manages systems across Singapore’s public healthcare clusters, hospitals, national specialty centres and polyclinics that are helping clinicians set new standards in quality care.
To do that, explained Leong Seng, “I tell my architects that we are change agents. You must really want to help an organisation fly - to catalyse its transformation.”
Among its innovations, IHiS leveraged mobile and tele-health technologies to enable mobile applications such as smartphone health diaries for patients, tele-consultations, tele-health hubs and remote monitoring devices for follow-up care of chronic disease patients at home.
Summed up Leong Seng, “What’s valuable about enterprise architecture is that it highlights what’s important.”
Enterprise architecture is valuable because it puts the spotlight on what’s important, said Leong Seng.
About Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise Architecture is the constructing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure, demonstrating the integration and standardisation requirements of a company's operating model. The enterprise architecture provides a long-term view of a company's processes, systems, and technologies so that individual projects can build capabilities and not just address existing needs.
Interested to attend future events such as this? Get in touch with The Architecture Community of Practice (ACoP) at
isstet@nus.edu.sg. ACoP is made up of passionate professionals specialising in enterprise, business, information, application, technology and solution architectures. ACoP was formed with the objective of promoting the advancement of the architecture practice through sharing, learning and support in the vibrant network of practitioners and regularly hosts events to share knowledge, experience and insights in order for practitioners to learn from each other
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