  Citation: Kitsios, F.; Kyriakopoulou, M.; Kamariotou, M. Exploring Business Strategy Modelling with ArchiMate: A Case Study Approach. Information 2022, 13, 31. https:// doi.org/10.3390/info13010031 Academic Editor: Rúben Pereira Received: 28 November 2021 Accepted: 10 January 2022 Published: 12 January 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). information Article Exploring Business Strategy Modelling with ArchiMate: A Case Study Approach Fotis Kitsios * , Maria Kyriakopoulou and Maria Kamariotou Department of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, GR54636 Thessaloniki, Greece; dai16068@uom.edu.gr (M.K.); mkamariotou@uom.edu.gr (M.K.) * Correspondence: kitsios@uom.gr Abstract: Enterprise architecture (EA) is a high-level abstraction of a business’ levels that aids in organizing planning and making better decisions. Researchers have concluded that the scope of EA is not focused only on technology planning but that the lack of business strategy and processes is the most important challenge of EA frameworks. The purpose of this article is to visualize the business strategy of a company using ArchiMate. Having a better understanding of how the concepts of strategic planning are used in businesses, we hope to improve their modelling with ArchiMate. This article adds to the existing literature by evaluating existing EA modelling languages and their skillfulness in model strategy. Furthermore, this article contributes to the identification of challenges in modelling and investigation of the ease of the use of language in the field of strategic planning. Furthermore, this article provides an approach to practitioners and EA architects who are attempting to develop efficient EA modelling projects and solve business complexity problems. Keywords: business strategy; strategic planning process; enterprise architecture; modelling; ArchiMate 1. Introduction 1.1. Problem Statement Companies use enterprise architecture (EA) to provide an integrated environment and support the integration of business and IT strategy [1–4]. The alignment between business strategy with IT is a significant management concern [5] that supports managers in achieving business goals, improving work-flow, increasing profitability, and sustaining a competitive advantage [5–9]. EA is a structured and aligned set of plans for the integrated representation of a given business and IT landscape in past, present, and future situations. It is a comprehensive tool for managing and retaining alignment [10,11]. Many academics argue that combining business strategy with EA helps achieve competitiveness and value, reduce the organization uncertainty, and maximize agility, company’s availability, and fault tolerance [12–14]. Besides, many researchers have concluded that the business strategy has not been fully integrated with EA frameworks [12–14]. The implementation of a business strategy is a significant aspect of organizational success. However, the understanding of a holistic perspective should facilitate the strategy formulation and visualization of related processes [15]. EA academics have also focused on modelling business strategy [16–19]. However, until now, the implementation of the business strategy through EA has been poorly understood and practitioners have regarded it as a difficult problem [15]. Academics conclude that this is required to represent how concepts in a company’s architecture are related to its business strategy or how changes to the architecture may ensure a formulated business strategy. Moreover, practitioners can define how to model business strategy, as well as how it affects EA. This assists businesses in analyzing and determining which function is best aligned with the strategic intent (scale, money, and time) [16–21]. Information 2022, 13, 31. https://doi.org/10.3390/info13010031 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/information