How Howden uses enterprise architecture to support its £10 billion growth ambition

From fragmented application knowledge to enterprise architecture at the top table

Before Bizzdesign, answering questions about Howden’s application landscape often depended on finding the people with the right knowledge. Which systems supported which capabilities? Who used them? How were they connected? And how many were there across the group?

Randhir Vayalambrone, Group Head of Architecture & Engineering at Howden Group, saw the need for a more reliable and consistent view of the application landscape to inform roadmap discussions.

With Bizzdesign, Howden brought information about its applications, technologies, business capabilities, and dependencies together in one place. This gave the architecture team trusted enterprise context for assessing the landscape, understanding the implications of change, and informing roadmap discussions.

With that foundation in place, enterprise architecture has moved from reactive support towards a strategic role in transformation and investment decisions, helping senior business and technology leaders understand what they have, decide what to change, and determine where investment can create the greatest value.

"Our biggest change in enterprise architecture at Howden Group with Bizzdesign is our ability to have very good, meaningful, insightful conversations with our business stakeholders and technology leadership team." —  Randhir Vayalambrone, Group Head of Architecture & Engineering, Howden Group

The challenge: Managing 1,200+ applications across a fast-growing global business

Howden’s enterprise architecture challenge was maintaining reliable, group-wide visibility across a large and continuously changing application estate. Howden has grown rapidly over three decades, expanding from three people to approximately 26,000 employees and around £3.5 billion in revenue. Much of that growth has come through mergers and acquisitions, each bringing new applications, technologies, operating practices, and technical debt. Randhir Vayalambrone estimates that around 10 applications may be added in a typical month, meaning the group’s application and technology landscape continues to evolve as the business grows.

Now the business is preparing for its next phase. Howden 2030 sets an ambitious target: 40,000 employees and £10 billion in revenue. The scale of the ambition is clear. Headcount is expected to increase substantially, while revenue must nearly triple. Reaching that ambition will require greater operational leverage and a technology landscape capable of supporting growth at scale.

Howden operates across 56 countries, with different regulations, market conditions, entities, and lines of business. This diversity is reflected in more than 50 operating models and an estate of 1,230 applications. The application landscape also reflects the group’s acquisition-led growth, with overlapping capabilities and many systems operating independently, with few APIs or connections to other parts of the estate.

As the application portfolio continues to grow and change, Howden needs to maintain a consistent group-wide view of application ownership, capability coverage, dependencies, cost, and risk.

Howden’s decentralized model had supported its growth by giving successful businesses the flexibility to respond to their clients, markets, and local requirements. As the group prepares for its next phase, it needs to distinguish between complexity required by local markets and lines of business, and areas where rationalization, modernization, or consolidation can support more scalable growth. Activities such as payments, accounting, customer relationship management, and risk and compliance offer opportunities for greater consistency across the group, while preserving the flexibility its brokers need to serve different clients, markets, and lines of business.

To address this challenge, Howden established North Star, an enterprise architecture initiative designed to shape and govern target architectures and roadmaps for key Howden 2030 transformation programs, using trusted enterprise context and decision intelligence from Bizzdesign.

Why Howden chose Bizzdesign as its enterprise architecture platform

With North Star setting the direction for Howden’s enterprise architecture practice, the group needed a platform that could support the breadth and complexity of the work.  

Howden evaluated several options and selected Bizzdesign for three main reasons: modelling strength, comprehensive support from modelling through to dashboards, and broad out-of-the-box capabilities.

• Strong modelling capabilities: Howden needed to represent its business, application, and technology landscape in sufficient depth.  
• Support from modelling through to dashboards: Bizzdesign could turn architecture data into accessible views and decision-ready insights for different stakeholders.  
• Broad out-of-the-box capabilities: The platform already supported most of the areas in which Howden’s architecture team worked, reducing the need to build extensive custom functionality.  

But the final decision was not solely about functionality. Trust developed throughout the procurement process also played a decisive role.

"The key factor that ultimately led to the decision was who we trusted and who we could see ourselves partnering with as the procurement process progressed." —  Randhir Vayalambrone, Group Head of Architecture & Engineering, Howden Group

During the proofs of concept, the Bizzdesign team was open and transparent in responding to Howden’s questions. The team also highlighted important rollout considerations and shared practical guidance on how to build adoption across the organization. That experience gave Howden confidence in Bizzdesign as both an enterprise architecture platform and a long-term partner.

That confidence continued after implementation. Randhir describes Bizzdesign’s professional services and customer success support as “best-in-class.”

The approach: Turning enterprise architecture data into transformation intelligence  

With Bizzdesign selected, Howden began building a shared repository that brings together information about its strategic priorities, business capabilities, applications, technologies, organizational structure, geographies, and dependencies.

This connected view helps the architecture team:

• Understand what the group has and how applications support business capabilities
• Identify overlapping capabilities and dependencies between systems  
• Surface complexity, risk, and areas of misalignment  
• Understand what could be affected as the business and its application and technology landscape change

Howden then uses these insights to:

• Distinguish necessary local variation from avoidable complexity  
• Identify opportunities to rationalize, modernize, or better connect applications  
• Support faster, more confident transformation and investment decisions
• Design pragmatic future states and govern the target architectures and roadmaps supporting Howden 2030

For Howden, the models and dashboards are a means of supporting better conversations and decisions. They provide the trusted context needed to raise the right questions, align stakeholders, and shape targets and roadmaps that are commercially and technically achievable.

Using enterprise architecture to prioritize application and broking-platform rationalization

One of the core initiatives supported by North Star is broking-platform rationalization across the Americas, UK and Ireland, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific.  

The program already has a broad reach. Howden has assessed applications across approximately 80% of the countries in which it operates, with focused programs underway across all four regions to consolidate, modernize, and retire applications.

To guide this work, current-state analysis from Bizzdesign gives Howden a clearer basis for comparing applications and focusing attention where rationalization could have the greatest cost and risk impact. Rather than treating every application equally, the team can identify the areas where consolidation or modernization may create the most value.

That ability to prioritize is particularly important given the scale of the opportunity. Howden currently operates approximately 200 broking platforms, and its consolidation initiatives are expected to reduce that number to roughly one-third of the current estate by 2030.

Together, these insights provide a trusted, evidence-based foundation for deciding where consolidation, modernization, or retirement should begin and directing rationalization efforts toward Howden’s 2030 ambition.

Connecting strategic applications through Howden’s digital backbone

Alongside application rationalization, Howden is developing a digital backbone to connect its strategic applications and improve how data moves through business processes. The aim is for colleagues to enter information once and reuse it across systems, reducing repeated data entry and improving consistency across the application landscape.

Howden expects this connected approach to support stronger data quality, risk and compliance, and access to information about clients, markets, and profitability. It may also help reduce errors-and-omissions exposure and allow the business to serve more clients using its existing capabilities.

Together, these initiatives show how Howden is using trusted enterprise context to understand dependencies, assess the implications of change, and make more informed transformation decisions.

The impact: Better decisions and enterprise architecture at the top table

Bizzdesign has given Howden more consistent visibility across its application and technology landscape, stronger evidence for transformation and investment decisions, and greater enterprise architecture influence with senior leadership.

1. Faster application landscape analysis

Howden can now draw on a consistent group-wide view of its application and technology landscape, rather than assembling fragmented information from different people and documents each time a question arises. This gives the architecture team greater visibility into how applications support business capabilities, who uses them, and how systems and technologies depend on one another.

More than 80% of the applications captured in Bizzdesign include critical information about capabilities, ownership, and dependencies. Because Howden’s application and technology landscape continues to evolve through active mergers and acquisitions, the Group Bizzdesign Center of Excellence continuously validates and improves this information.

With this foundation in place, the time needed to answer application-landscape questions has reduced significantly. Before Bizzdesign, even when the team had some knowledge of the applications or knew the right contacts, answering a question could take one to two days. For unfamiliar applications without established contacts, it could take up to two weeks. Today, most questions can be answered in minutes or hours. More complex, bespoke analyses, typically involving scenarios that are not yet fully modeled or covered by existing dashboards, take a few days at most.

This faster access to trusted, connected enterprise context gives Howden a clearer basis for assessing complexity, duplication, cost, risk, and the implications of change.

2. More informed transformation and investment decisions

The decision intelligence from Bizzdesign supports conversations about application rationalization, modernization, consolidation, integration, and digital and AI initiatives. It helps Howden compare opportunities and decide where investment could create the greatest value or address the most significant cost and risk implications.

3. Enterprise architecture as a trusted adviser

The improved visibility has also changed how enterprise architecture contributes to senior business and technology conversations. The team can explain where Howden has opportunities to modernize, consolidate, integrate, and transform the landscape, and bring trusted context and evidence into discussions about where change could deliver the greatest value.

“We are able to sit at the top table to explain where they have opportunities to change, where they have the best value from driving modernization or transformation, consolidation initiatives, integration initiatives, digital and AI initiatives across the business.” —  Randhir Vayalambrone, Group Head of Architecture & Engineering, Howden Group

Randhir Vayalambrone notes that the perception of architecture itself has changed. Enterprise architecture and what comes from Bizzdesign is now front and center for the most senior leadership team.

What’s next: Advancing Howden’s North Star for scalable growth

With support from Bizzdesign professional services and customer success, Howden established its Group Bizzdesign Center of Excellence and drove adoption beyond the core enterprise architecture team. In conversations about technology, applications, programs, and transformational change, business and technology colleagues now ask whether the relevant information is captured in or comes from Bizzdesign.

That broader adoption provides a stronger foundation for the next phase of North Star. Howden plans to continue rationalizing the application estate, connecting strategic applications to improve end-to-end data flow, and advancing the target architectures and roadmaps that support Howden 2030.

Howden is also interested in exploring how AI could make architecture information easier for more people to access and use.

Together, this work supports Howden’s wider growth ambition by helping the group manage complexity, strengthen coordination, and make transformation decisions with greater speed and confidence while maintaining control over complexity, risk, and investment.

“Enterprise architecture is now seen as a trusted adviser and partner to senior business stakeholders.” —  Randhir Vayalambrone, Group Head of Architecture & Engineering, Howden Group