3. Strategic and Tactical Context of EAM

This chapter addresses the strategic and tactical context of the EAM capability in an enterprise. To provide a basis for the following sections, first essential terms in the context of enterprise strategy and tactics are defined. Afterward, core parameters of the business strategy and the business operations of an enterprise are sketched out. These include classic strategy parameters, like cost focus, quality focus, or the market coverage of an enterprise. More operational parameters include the degree of business process integration, process standardization, and innovation within an enterprise. When these overarching enterprise parameters are clarified, we describe the parameters of the EAM capability itself. These include, for example, the scope of the EAM capability, its allocation, its stance toward standardization, and its planning horizon. In the following synthesis, we correlate the parameters for the enterprise strategy, the operative enterprise, and the EAM capability. The last section describes the operative context of EAM, i.e., the structure and the capabilities of the IT organization. Here, we first discuss the general shape of the IT organization (e.g., centralized vs. decentralized) and fundamental tasks of the IT organization (e.g., managing IT applications and infrastructure). Finally, we describe the individual capabilities of the IT organization that are most relevant for EAM.