Navigating Transformation: How FLSmidth’s EA Team Guides Strategy and Shapes their Future State

Barriers to Effective EA with Prior Tool

As a leader in providing sustainable productivity to the mining and cement industries, FLSmidth was facing significant organizational shifts – a large-scale merger and acquisition of TK Mining, followed by a carve-out of their cement division led to a company-wide business transformation focused on their core mining operations.

This period of intense change underscored a critical need for an Enterprise Architecture (EA) platform that would help them understand what they had and what needed to be done to reach their ideal future state for the mining division. 

Their EA team was in the unique position of already being regarded as key strategic advisors to the business, but they lacked the right platform that would empower them. While they had an existing EA tool, LeanIX, they found it wasn’t delivering the value and functionality they needed.

The challenges FLSmidth faced with their previous EA solution were multifaceted:

• High Barrier to Entry for Business Users Leading to Low Engagement: Their previous EA solution was viewed as a tool primarily for architects, creating a significant hurdle for wider organizational adoption. Business users struggled with its interface, leading to a bottleneck where the small EA team of three was constantly tasked with extracting and translating architectural data. This often resulted in information being exported to more familiar formats, such as Excel, undermining the very purpose of a dedicated EA platform. These requests also ate into the valuable and limited capacity of the lean EA team, detracting from their primary focus of providing strategic guidance to the business.
• Costly Documentation: The pricing structure of their previous tool made it difficult to justify comprehensive documentation of their application landscape — especially given the volume of systems inherited through the merger. With more than 50 ERP systems alone, the need for a complete and unified IT view was urgent. This challenge prompted them to re-evaluate how well their platform supported cost-effectiveness and strategic visibility. While they planned to rationalize their applications, they were still facing a substantial short-term inflation in cost without clear value.
• Limited Collaboration and Data Democratization: With such a lean EA team, it was imperative that FLSmidth’s EA platform is effective with crowdsourcing and democratizing access to architectural information across diverse teams and stakeholders. These included stakeholders with varying levels of technical understanding so user-friendliness and an accessible interface was of critical importance for successful adoption. Their previous tool lacked the intuitive collaboration features and data democratization capabilities that FLSmidth required to truly engage the wider organization in the EA process.

“When you start having an enterprise architecture tool only for architects and technical people, then it's really hard because other people in the organization won't be interested in training for something they use only occasionally. Then you end up creating PowerPoints and working with the data which creates an overhead for the EA function that doesn’t provide any value. If you can get rid of that overhead and get people to consume the data in the right way, that makes a big difference.”

- Walter Hannemann, Head of Architecture, Data & AI at FLSmidth

How Ardoq Helped Them Shift to a More Data-Driven, Aligned Way of Working

Faced with these mounting challenges and seeking a more agile and user-friendly solution, FLSmidth turned to Ardoq. This decision was rooted in a previous positive experience and a clear vision for an EA practice that was pragmatic and deeply integrated with the business. They were also clear about avoiding traditional platforms that were very framework-focused, as they did not align with their organization’s approach to EA. 

Their strategic focus extended beyond the technical intricacies of IT, emphasizing the crucial aspects of business operating models, capabilities, processes, and the flow of data. Ardoq’s promise of enhanced data democratization, easier access management, and flexibility resonated strongly with FLSmidth’s needs.

• Swift Data Migration and Onboarding: Their migration team initially approached the project with a relational database perspective. While it took some effort to educate and get buy-in from teams on the concept of graph databases as well as realign data to the new metamodel, Ardoq’s onboarding approach and guidance made it smoother and easier to integrate with their existing tools than their previous EA solution.
• Improving Engagement, Crowdsourcing Data, and More Efficient Access Management: Ardoq’s survey capabilities were leveraged to gather crucial information directly from business and IT stakeholders, while its simplified user interface in Ardoq Discover aimed to make detailed architectural insights accessible to everyone, regardless of their technical expertise. It was also much easier for them as Ardoq worked with single-sign on, reducing manual effort on their part to create new users and manage access. 
• Breaking Down Silos with a Single Source of Truth: Ardoq was envisioned as the central repository for all architectural and application data, fostering a shared understanding and facilitating better alignment between business and IT initiatives.
• Adopting a Use Case-Centric Approach: To accelerate implementation and time to value, they leveraged Ardoq’s solutions, such as Application Lifecycle Management. These solutions come with ready-to-use models and assets such as dashboards, surveys, and reports, saving them valuable configuration time.

Key Outcomes With Ardoq: Broader Engagement and Improved Alignment with Cybersecurity

The initial results of this transition have been encouraging, signaling a positive shift in how FLSmidth manages its complex architecture:

• Broader Organizational Engagement: The accessibility of Ardoq has led to a noticeable increase in user adoption across different teams and departments compared to its previous solution.
• Improved Data Contribution: With a less intimidating platform, more stakeholders are contributing to the architectural documentation, leading to a richer and more comprehensive understanding of the IT landscape.
• Reduced Burden on the EA Team: The self-service capabilities of Ardoq have decreased the number of basic information requests directed to the EA team, freeing up their time for more strategic endeavors.
• Greater Alignment with Cybersecurity: Their cybersecurity team transitioned from their previous risk management tool to Ardoq, enhancing their overview of the organization’s IT and security needs and interdependencies.

When it comes to engaging the wider organization, Walter advises:

“You need to ensure people have their A-ha moment before pressing on, because otherwise they will have trouble understanding and buying into the value of the platform.”

- Walter Hannemann, Head of Architecture, Data & AI at FLSmidth

Next Steps

Reflecting on the process with Ardoq so far, Walter Hannemann, Head of Architecture, Data & AI at FLSmidth, advises EAs to begin, not with frameworks, but by understanding the expectations of their role, stakeholders, and the wider organization to be successful.

“EAs need to think about what kind of relationship they want with their counterparts and with the business and to understand what is expected from the EA function in a given company, then find the best way to implement that.”

Looking ahead, FLSmidth plans to further integrate Ardoq into their IT management ecosystem, with future integrations planned for a new service management tool and Technology Portfolio Management implementation. They also see significant potential in exploring additional Ardoq Solutions to optimize processes within other business units.

About FLSmidth

FLSmidth is a leading supplier of productivity and sustainability solutions to the global mining and cement industries. A Danish multinational technology company based in Copenhagen, it has operations spanning the globe with over 8,000 employees present in more than 60 countries. In 2024, FLSmidth generated revenue of DKK 20.2 billion.

With their MissionZero programme, they have set a target of providing solutions for zero-emissions mining and zero-emissions cement production by 2030, supporting a green transition built upon sustainable materials.