Free–of-charge ARIS report: ARIS Enterprise Asset Evaluation

The ARIS “Enterprise Asset Evaluation” report is like a portfolio analysis, which I want to share with you today. First, I give you a little background about portfolio analysis.

Portfolio Analysis

Portfolio analysis is an instrument of strategic corporate planning. The most famous instruments are:

• Market growth, market share portfolio of BCG (Boston Consulting Group) and
• McKinsey portfolio, a portfolio about market attractiveness and competitive advantage.

The portfolio analysis by BCG also called Growth-Share-Matrix determines the strategic business units of a company with the help of the market growth and the relative market share. The strategic business units are classified in four fields, named Cash cows, Dogs, Question marks and Stars.

The McKinsey portfolio is an advancement of the BSG portfolio and has nine fields. The dimensions are market attractiveness and competitive advantage. These dimensions are sub classified. Just to mention some sub criteria, for market attractiveness exists the market size or margin of the branch, for competitive advantage market share or product quality.

With a portfolio analysis I get information about processes and assets which promote the success of my company and my company’s strategy. It is evaluated by selected attributes which form the borders of the portfolio.

As a result of portfolio analysis, the core company strategy is defined and continuous growth of the company is achieved.

Similar to process evaluation, you could analyze your IT landscape to see the current usage situation of IT assets and to analyze the costs created. Such an analysis is executed with the new ARIS report “Enterprise Asset Evaluation”.

Enterprise Asset Evaluation

To make faster decisions, enterprise assets such as processes, IT infrastructure, products, risks, services and more should be evaluated. With the brand new free-of-charge ARIS report “Enterprise Asset Evaluation” I get a 3-dimensional view of the information available in my ARIS repository such as:

• Which processes are the most expensive, take longest and are most critical?
• Which IT systems are most critical, cost a lot and are widely distributed?
• Which risks have the highest probability and would cause the biggest damage?

With the “Enterprise Asset Evaluation” report I analyze different object types based on the same set of criteria – like criticality, cost, and technical risk. The report can be invoked on object occurrences and uses 3 dimensions.

The report can pre-select a profile(s) based on types of selected assets:

• Processes
• IT systems
• Product/services
• Risks
• Business services

You can define in a flexible manner, which asset to analyze. For analysis, you got 3-dimensions. To do the analysis, you don’t need any programming knowledge, but you can just configure the intended result. Altogether simple handling: it is a click and go analysis.

Report Download & Setup

To get started, download the ARIS Enterprise Asset Evaluation report and save it on your hard disk. Please note, you can only download the report if you are currently logged in to ARIS Community. The download is a ZIP file containing the report and a filter. You need to import the filter first, because the report depends on it. The report file has the ending .arx and the filter .amc.

Make sure that you have ARIS Business Architect, because you need the administration module to import the report. In case you only got ARIS Business Designer on your machine, you must ask your ARIS administrator to install the report for you.

For more information about downloading & setting up reports and macros in ARIS, read the article “Reports and macros in ARIS”.

After download and installation, you can execute the report in different ways.

Starting the report

First, you have to define the analysis context. You can select objects in Explorer, in the search result dialog or in Designer and startup the report. You can also start it by selecting occurrences in a diagram, for example with different object types. Furthermore, the report could be executed on one or many models (of the same or different type). The selected models are scanned and all object symbols (not object definitions) are listed. If an object type is selected, default symbol should be used.

Report output

As a result, a HTML page is generated containing a 3rd dimension picture and a table with the following columns:

• Object name
• Symbol type
• Value of X dimension
• Value of Y dimension
• Value of Z dimension

A legend is placed to understand the graphic. On top of the chart you find the title which describes the evaluation of the selected profile.

Below, you can see an example.

Note: Check this post if you are looking for other free ARIS reports & macros. If you want to discuss ARIS scripting problems, make sure to join the group Reports & Macros in ARIS.