Tata Steel Nederland: Strategic Tech Investments For a Sustainable Future
Challenges
Investments required for CO2-neutral steel production.
Balancing IT with manufacturing asset upgrades.
Legacy technology and coupled applications complicate changes.
Mainframe and customized software systems.
High maintenance costs for stability and security.
Results
Cost-effective landscape aligned with goals.
Mapping current and desired states for planning.
Consistent data visualization enhances collaboration.
Better visibility through Application Portfolio Management.
Future-proofing with capability-based planning.
Why Was Tata Steel Nederland Looking for a ‘Greener’ Future?
To achieve the transition to CO2-neutral steel production, TSN needed to make significant investments to its IT landscape. However, these investments had to be carefully evaluated against other priorities, such as maintaining and upgrading manufacturing assets.
TSN's architecture team plays a pivotal role in this process. They ensure that decisions about technology investments are well-informed and aligned with the company's strategic objectives of advancing TSN's journey toward climate-neutral steel production.
There are many challenges along the way. A significant part of TSN's IT landscape is based on legacy technology, which is highly complex with tightly coupled applications that create challenges for modernization. Many core business processes rely on bespoke mainframe applications over 30 years old, and off-the-shelf software has been heavily customized. This makes changes to the IT landscape difficult, slow, and costly, with high running costs to maintain stability and security.
The team had been using Bizzdesign for around a decade, primarily for architecture work, including modeling architectures and visualizing the IT landscape. They decided to leverage the enterprise architecture tool for strategic investment planning due to their familiarity and partnership with the Bizzdesign team. They wanted Bizzdesign to help meet their enterprise architecture objectives of building strong digital capabilities and delivering a future-proof IT landscape for the company.
How an Enterprise Architecture Tool Accelerates Strategic Alignment
The team have embarked on a journey to develop a long-term technology strategy and create clear roadmaps, to ensure that TSN’s technology investments aligns with strategic goals. They now follow a 3-step process using Bizzdesign Horizzon for architecture modeling and analysis to achieve this.
To start, the team analyze the current situation. They review the technical layer of the IT landscape, including peer reviews and discussions, and create architectural artifacts, which are shared throughout the organization.
The second step is to focus on portfolio management, assessing business applications based on cost, criticality, and technical aspects within IT, consulting business stakeholders to evaluate current and future business fitness. This enables the mapping applications on a 2x2 matrix and Application Portfolio Management strategies to be defined.
Finally, the team are also starting to focus on Capability Based Planning. TSN’s Business capabilities are assessed for current and target maturity levels and current applications are linked to business capabilities. This allows the architecture team to visualize the connections and determine what technology changes are required to support the priority business improvements.
To ensure a single source of truth, the team integrated ServiceNow's CMDB with Bizzdesign Horizzon, enabling seamless data import via API for effective IT landscape analysis. They also follow a 'delivery' approach with enterprise architecture, and from a deployment perspective, they have dashboards to track delivery across all domains. Additionally, the team developed the Business Application Fitness and Capability Maturity Assessments, both running in Bizzdesign Horizzon, which, when combined, support current strategic investment planning initiatives and ensure investments focus on the right areas.
"Every euro of IT spend must deliver maximum value to support our CO2-neutral transition – we use Bizzdesign to drive transparency, and ensure alignment with our strategic direction for greater impact." –– Emma McKay, Director of Enterprise Architecture at Tata Steel Nederland
How the Architecture Team Secures TSN’s Future
The team experienced the following benefits from using Bizzdesign Horizzon:
Developing a cost-effective landscape aligned with long-term goals
The team has developed a strategic plan to align technology with TSN's long-term goals, ensuring a cost-effective IT landscape. Their approach prioritizes investments in critical areas that drive the business forward while supporting TSN's 'clean, green and circular' objectives – every euro spent is maximized to deliver the greatest value.
Mapping current and desired states improves planning
By mapping the current state and desired states, TSN can prioritize objectives and plan activities at an enterprise level, cutting across functional silos. This alignment enhances strategic planning and ensures a cohesive approach to long-term goals.
A consistent approach to visualizing data enhances collaboration
The team has facilitated stakeholder collaboration by providing a consistent and objective approach to capturing and visualizing data. This transparency fosters alignment and commitment to the company's strategic direction, enabling logical, data-driven investment decisions and building consensus on the plan.
Improved visibility with Application Portfolio Management
Bizzdesign Horizzon has enhanced visibility into TSN's IT landscape, allowing the team to effectively categorize applications and manage their life cycle. This insight supports IT/OT architecture, ensuring security, stability, and smooth operation. It also helps eliminate or migrate high-risk, business-critical applications, providing robust support for production and invoicing processes.
Future-proofing technology with Capability-based Planning
By ensuring that modern IT supports priority business capabilities, TSN can focus on the capabilities required to deliver its clean and green future. Data maturity is also prioritized, preparing the company for future readiness in AI and other emerging technologies.
"Bizzdesign has enabled us to make more informed IT investment decisions by providing a structured approach to evaluating applications and assessing the maturity of our business capabilities." –– Emma McKay, Director of Enterprise Architecture at Tata Steel Nederland
Tata Steel Nederland (TSN), part of the renowned Tata Group, is a global leader in sustainable steel production and is recognized as a Steel Sustainability Champion. Despite the high volume of production, reducing their impact on the living environment is TSN's top priority and their ambition is to radically transform their business over the next two decades.