Understanding Companies in the Age of Digitalization

In the digital age, IT in a large, integrated multi-division energy corporation like EnBW faces a variety of challenges. On the one hand, the business divisions should be optimally supported, on the other hand, it is necessary to unlock value-adding and cross-divisional synergies within the corporation and create a functional whole. In addition, politics demands that energy companies build intelligent infrastructures and drive the energy transition with new digital solutions. This chapter shows, using EnBW and concrete examples, what digital transformation means for companies and what impact digitization has on their business. Using the business capabilities approach, I show how enterprise architects can strategically help to further develop the IT landscape of such companies. With the help of the Semiotic Enterprise Model, it should become clear how companies and their needs can be more effectively understood and represented in enterprise architecture models within the context of digital transformation.