1300 000 480
Enterprise architecture platforms are often seen as repositories: places where models go to live, diagrams are stored, and frameworks are documented. But leading organisations are now using Bizzdesign Horizzon very differently, as an automation and decision-support platform that actively reduces manual effort, improves governance, and accelerates change.
Below are several real-world use cases showing how organisations are automating everyday tasks using Horizzon.
1. Automated Impact Analysis for Change Initiatives
The problem: Change initiatives (cloud migrations, ERP upgrades, regulatory responses) often trigger weeks of manual impact analysis. Architects interview stakeholders, inspect diagrams, and piece together dependencies, repeatedly.
How Horizzon is used: Organisations model applications, processes, capabilities, data objects, and technologies once, then use Horizzon’s dependency analysis to automatically surface:
- Which business capabilities are impacted by a system change
- Which processes rely on a retiring application
- Which data objects are affected by infrastructure decisions
The automation benefit: Impact analysis becomes repeatable and instant, not bespoke and manual. Teams can run scenarios in minutes rather than weeks, dramatically improving responsiveness to change.
2. Automated Application Portfolio Assessments
The problem: Application rationalisation is often spreadsheet-driven, inconsistent, and quickly outdated. Scores are manually calculated and rarely trusted.
How Horizzon is used: Organisations configure automated assessments based on criteria such as:
- Technical health (age, vendor support, risk)
- Business value (capability coverage, user base)
- Cost and strategic alignment
Scores are calculated automatically as data is updated and visualised in portfolio dashboards.
The automation benefit: Application portfolios stay continuously assessed, enabling objective investment decisions and removing manual scoring exercises.
3. Governance Automation Through Guardrails (Not Gatekeeping)
The problem: Architecture governance often slows delivery because reviews are manual, subjective, and late in the lifecycle.
How Horizzon is used: Organisations embed architecture principles, standards, and policies directly into Horizzon. Automated checks can highlight:
- Non-standard technologies
- Policy breaches (e.g. unsupported platforms)
- Deviations from target architectures
These insights are surfaced early, often during design, rather than at approval time.
The automation benefit: Governance shifts from manual policing to automated guidance, improving compliance without slowing teams down.
4. Automated Roadmapping and Dependency Visualisation
The problem: Roadmaps are typically maintained in PowerPoint or Excel, disconnected from architectural reality and quickly out of date.
How Horizzon is used: By linking initiatives, plateaus, applications, and capabilities, organisations can automatically generate:
- Time-based roadmaps
- Dependency views between initiatives
- Capability uplift timelines
When an initiative changes, the roadmap updates automatically.
The automation benefit: Roadmaps become living artefacts, not static documents, reducing manual updates and improving executive trust.
5. Data-Driven Decision Support for Investment Planning
The problem: Investment decisions are often made with incomplete information, relying on narrative rather than evidence.
How Horizzon is used: Organisations connect architectural data to strategic objectives, risks, and costs. Automated views show:
- Which investments contribute to which strategic goals
- Where multiple initiatives target the same capability
- Where gaps or overlaps exist
The automation benefit: Decision-makers receive automated, evidence-based insights, reducing reliance on manual analysis and subjective debate.
6. Automated Views for Different Stakeholders
The problem: Architects spend significant time tailoring views and presentations for different audiences.
How Horizzon is used: Custom viewpoints and dashboards are configured once, then automatically updated for:
- Executives (strategy and investment views)
- Delivery teams (solution and dependency views)
- Risk and compliance teams (technology and policy views)
The automation benefit: Less time creating artefacts, more time interpreting them, with everyone working from the same underlying data.
From Documentation to Automation
What this use cases have in common is a shift in mindset:
Horizzon is not just where architecture is documented, it’s where architectural work is automated.
By embedding logic, relationships, assessments, and rules into the platform, organisations reduce manual effort, improve consistency, and make architecture a daily decision-support capability rather than an occasional exercise.
The most mature teams aren’t asking “How do we model more?” They’re asking, “What manual work can we eliminate next?”
