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The role of Business domain thinking in enterprise agility
Agility is survival. Yet, many organisations still operate within deeply entrenched silos: marketing doing ‘marketing things’, IT doing ‘IT things’, operations doing ‘operations things’, each with its own processes, systems, and KPIs.
These silos may feel comfortable and controlled, but they create blind spots, duplication, and bottlenecks that cripple enterprise agility.
The problem with Silos
Functional silos evolved for specialisation and accountability (valid reasons in their time). But when the world moves faster than your organisational handovers, the downsides multiply:
- Slow response to change because decisions must move through multiple disconnected chains.
- Inconsistent customer experiences when teams optimise for their own metrics, not the end-to-end journey.
- Duplication of effort as functions build similar capabilities in isolation.
- Cultural division where ‘us and them’ thinking erodes trust and collaboration.
The shift from functions to Business domains
The antidote isn’t chaos . . it’s Business domain thinking. Instead of focusing on traditional departmental boundaries, you focus on the capabilities the business needs to deliver outcomes.
A business domain is a logical grouping of capabilities that delivers a coherent slice of value. Think of domains like Customer Engagement, Product Development, or Data & Insights - each cutting across multiple functions.
By structuring work around domains rather than job titles, organisations:
- Align directly to customer or business value streams.
- Reduce dependency bottlenecks by owning end-to-end outcomes.
- Foster shared accountability across disciplines.
The role of Business Capability Models
To move from silos to domains, you need a map. That’s where Business Capability Models come in.
A capability model describes what the business does, not how it does it or who does it. Capabilities are stable overtime (unlike processes or systems) and can be reused across multiple domains.
For example:
- Customer Onboarding may live in a ‘Customer Engagement’ domain, but is enabled by capabilities in marketing, sales, IT, and compliance.
- Mapping these capabilities highlights where investment should be shared rather than duplicated.
When done well, a capability model becomes the Rosetta Stone for aligning strategy, technology, and operations.
Embedding the shared service mindset
Breaking silos isn’t just an org chart exercise .. it’s a cultural shift. Shared services thinking is the glue.
Rather than each team building its own tools, processes, and policies, shared services provide reusable, high-quality, and standardised capabilities across the enterprise. This:
- Improves efficiency through scale and consistency.
- Reduces tech sprawl and integration headaches.
- Frees domain teams to focus on differentiated value, not reinventing the wheel.
Examples might include:
- A central data platform serving multiple domains.
- A shared identity and access management service supporting all customer-facing and internal systems.
- A design system enabling consistent, brand-aligned experiences across products.
Why this fuels Enterprise agility
When you replace silos with integrated capabilities and shared services, agility follows naturally:
- Teams can pivot faster because they aren’t rebuilding from scratch.
- Strategic changes ripple across the business with less friction.
- The organisation can scale up or down without losing cohesion.
It’s the difference between dozens of rowing boats going in slightly different directions .. and a single, well-coordinated crew pulling together at speed.
Mapping this to BDAT - a whole-of-Enterprise approach
Business Domain Thinking works best when it’s grounded in a BDAT framework - ensuring integration happens across the entire enterprise stack:
- Business: Identify value streams and model the capabilities that deliver them. Shift ownership from functional silos to domain-based teams aligned to business outcomes.
- Data: Establish enterprise-wide data standards and platforms as shared services, ensuring that domains work from the same trusted datasets.
- Applications: Consolidate and rationalise systems to avoid duplication, making them reusable building blocks across domains.
- Technology: Provide the common infrastructure, security, and integration layers that underpin all domains, enabling speed without sacrificing stability.
By aligning each BDAT layer to business domains,organisations ensure that agility is not just a project-by-project achievement,but an embedded way of operating.
Enterprise agility isn’t about moving faster for the sake of it .. it’s about moving together in the right direction. Business domain thinking, powered by capability models and a shared service mindset, transforms scattered effort into coordinated impact.
In a world where the pace of change only accelerates, integration is your competitive advantage.
