The Enterprise Value Architecture (EVA™)
See how the parts of your business hold each other up, and fix the weakest first.
The Enterprise Value Architecture (EVA™) is the method EPS works by. It looks at a business through eight domains, from where it is going to what it is worth, shows how they depend on one another, and names the one holding the rest back, so your effort goes where it counts first.
One idea underneath it
Every business turns its inputs into value, one step at a time. The step that holds back sets the pace for all the rest.
Inputs
Your people, your money, your time and what the business knows.
Capabilities
What the business is able to do with them.
Execution
The work actually done, on time and as planned.
Outcomes
What that work produces: customers served, work delivered, problems solved.
Value
What the business is worth, and what it can keep up.
Eight domains of how a business runs
Each domain is one part of how the business runs, and each depends on the others.
Strategic Architecture
Direction: what the business is for, which customers and offers it chooses, and the few priorities this year's effort goes to.
Organizational Architecture
Structure and flow: who decides what, how work moves between people, and whether the business runs without the owner in every step.
Business Architecture
Analysis: knowing what customers need, what each offer costs to deliver, and what a change is worth before making it.
Delivery Architecture
Execution: initiatives with owners, milestones and dates, risks dealt with before they land, and work finished rather than only started.
Operational Architecture
The routine done well: measured work, steady improvement, deadlines kept and repetitive tasks automated.
Intelligence Architecture
Information and judgment: reliable numbers in one place, read regularly, and software and AI used where they help.
Human Architecture
Leadership, skills and change: people who know what is expected, grow in the role, and take part in changes rather than resist them.
Value Architecture
Value: knowing what each investment and decision returned, and keeping the evidence of it.
Why the weakest link matters
EVA™ multiplies rather than adds. The index for the whole business is a geometric mean of the eight domains, so one weak domain pulls the whole down further than an average would, however strong the others are.
Take seven domains at 75 and one at 25. A plain average says 68.8, Orchestrated. EVA's index says 65.4, Integrated, because the one weak domain holds the rest back.
The capability assessment
Answer plain statements about how the business runs today, and the workspace works out where it stands, which domain is holding it back, and what to do first.
- 5 plain statements a domain, 40 in all, each answered from Not yet to Fully
- A score out of 100 for each domain, and one index for the whole business
- The stage the business is at, and the weakest link named
- Next steps ranked by how much each would lift the whole
Five stages
Where the index puts the business, from capability in pockets to a business that improves as it runs.
Fragmented
Capability is in pockets, and results depend on who is there that day. Index 0 to 34.
Emerging
The disciplines are forming, but they do not yet connect across the business. Index 35 to 49.
Integrated
The domains support one another and results are reliable, though weak links still hold the whole back. Index 50 to 67.
Orchestrated
The business runs as one system: change is deliberate, measured and adapted. Index 68 to 81.
Optimized
Every domain is strong, and the business improves as it runs. Index 82 and above.
Two ways to take it
On your own, in the workspace
Every plan includes the assessment and its result. On Business Owner and above you keep up to 40 over time, so you can see what moved, each with a report you can issue.
With an EPS assessor
In the Assess package, an EPS assessor rates the business with you, notes the evidence behind each domain and how sure they are, and walks you through the readout. You see their result beside your own.
A score you can trust
Made from your answers
Every score is worked out from the answers given, the same way every time, and says so.
No invented comparisons
It sets no business against an industry figure it cannot source, and puts no dollar amount on doing nothing. An EPS assessor may add a reference for a domain, always with its source.
Built for your size
The statements are written for a business of 1 to 25 people, and each points at the part of the workspace where the work happens.
Find your weakest link
Take the assessment in your own workspace, or book a 30-minute call about taking it with an EPS assessor.