Following a major merger, the organisation faced a complex landscape of overlapping systems, duplicated capabilities, and inconsistent design practices across business and IT. Without a clear architectural foundation, it became difficult to make informed decisions about solution rationalisation, investment priorities, or long-term technology direction.
At the same time, a comprehensive review of ICT performance and spending revealed further opportunities to improve efficiency and prepare for looming financial pressures. The organisation needed a structured, capability-driven approach to restore clarity, strengthen governance, and guide integration decisions with confidence.
What Prompted Change?
The merger created far more than a technology challenge; it reshaped the organisation’s operating landscape. Different business units brought their own systems, processes, and ways of working, making it difficult to present a unified view of capability, cost, or strategic priorities. What had previously been manageable at a smaller scale became increasingly opaque and inefficient as the merged organisation grew.
Leadership faced mounting pressure to streamline operations, prepare for anticipated revenue constraints, and improve the transparency of ICT performance. Without a clearer picture of what the business actually did and which systems supported those functions, the organisation risked duplication, misaligned investments, and missed savings opportunities.
These conditions made it clear that a more mature, business-aligned enterprise architecture capability was essential to support confident decision-making in the post-merger environment.
Strategy in Action
Fragile to Agile began by establishing a clear architectural foundation, developing a Business Capability Model to bring structure and transparency to the post-merger environment. This model quickly became central to discussions with executives, enabling evidence-based decisions about system rationalisation and the degree of standardisation required across different parts of the organisation.
Beyond this initial work, we undertook a full assessment of the ICT function, benchmarking performance against both internal global counterparts and similar external organisations. This provided leadership with a fact-based view of efficiency, cost, and capability gaps, along with clear opportunities for improvement.
The capability model and supporting assessments were adopted broadly across the organisation, including internationally, becoming a recognised design artefact for global reporting, data classification, and standardisation decisions. Fragile to Agile continued to support the organisation through periodic reviews and targeted advisory, helping navigate cost pressures, workforce adjustments, and continued EA maturity uplift, ensuring the organisation remained aligned, efficient, and strategically positioned.
Delivering Meaningful Impact
The introduction of a clear, business-aligned capability model gave the organisation something it had not previously possessed: a unified and objective view of how the business operates and the systems that support it. This clarity enabled leaders at both national and global levels to make confident decisions about standardisation, solution rationalisation, and investment priorities, reducing overlap, strengthening governance, and improving coherence across the post-merger environment.
The model has since become a core artefact within the organisation’s enterprise architecture practice, underpinning global reporting, data classification, and capability planning. Cost-saving opportunities identified through the architecture assessment delivered immediate financial benefit, while ongoing advisory support helped the organisation navigate shifting budget pressures and temporary workforce adjustments without losing strategic direction.
As the organisation’s architecture maturity continued to grow, so did its ability to manage change with stability, discipline, and foresight, positioning the business for sustainable performance well beyond the initial merger integration.
