Business architects, who blend technology expertise with business acumen, are emerging as the ideal professionals to lead organizations through the complex world of AI. Along with hybrid business and tech skills, professionals seeking to advance in today's and tomorrow's economy need to demonstrate a tenacious spirit and a tenacious personality, according to a senior executive at one of the world's leading technology infrastructure organizations.
Andrew Allan, senior vice president of financial operations for the CIO's office at Siemens, said that IT implementations are no longer once-and-done operations. There is a lot of trial and error in new technology, he noted. What do you want it to do? How do you want to embrace it? Yet at the same time, Allan said he does not see AI replacing technology professionals' skills anytime soon at his company. The emphasis remains on human guidance of AI, not the other way around.
Solving business challenges
ZDNET spoke with Allan at the recent Salesforce AgentForce event in New York, where he discussed steering an organization with more than 250,000 employees globally on a new course in an increasingly AI-saturated world. Combined technology and business skills are in high demand at Siemens, a sprawling conglomerate that produces and sells digital and automation solutions to a range of heavy industries. The company seeks business architects and like-minded professionals who have deep knowledge of the complexities of the business and the problems they are trying to solve, and who can translate that back to a technological solution, said Allan.
When you start looking at what agents can do, you need people who can translate and decipher that, he said. It also means before you break ground, you need a good idea of what you are doing, including user stories, ethics, ROI, and the business case. This translation layer is critical because AI systems, especially agentic AI, operate on defined goals and constraints. Without a clear understanding of business objectives, these agents can drift or produce unintended outcomes. Business architects bridge that gap.
Allan recognized that adding agents across the organization means greater complexity, which requires management skills. You have to figure out what you want, he said. What is your north star? What do you want the technology to do? What is the business problem you are trying to solve? If you can ground your use cases in a business opportunity or business problem, that really helps you in how you apply the technology. This approach ensures that AI initiatives deliver tangible value rather than becoming technical exercises in search of a purpose.
He said business architects require a degree of experience, normally a minimum of 10 years of planning and analysis experience, according to industry experts. In addition to some systems background, the business architect will possess a broad background in different business sectors, with in-depth experience and knowledge in at least one aspect of the business, such as engineering, manufacturing, or planning. This depth allows them to ask the right questions and identify opportunities that a purely technical or purely business role might miss.
The role of a business architect differs from that of an enterprise architect, Allan explained. An enterprise architect considers applications and infrastructure for a technology roadmap, while a business architect speaks with R&D segments, the chief revenue officer, and pricing and packaging specialists. They ask, okay, what are the capabilities that you guys are looking for? What are our go-to-market strategies? What are our products? They bring it back in to say, okay, this is the direction that the business wants to go in, how does that match up with our architectural roadmap? Are there complementary areas? Are there areas we are going to have to reason over?
This distinction is crucial as companies scale their AI efforts. Enterprise architects ensure systems integrate and scale; business architects ensure systems solve real-world problems. Without the latter, AI projects risk becoming expensive experiments that fail to achieve adoption or ROI. The business architect acts as a translator between the C-suite and the engineering team, making sure that strategy and execution align.
New skills for new demands
Siemens recently embarked on what it calls a One Tech Company strategy, seeking to blend digital and real-world technologies in an approach that integrates software, hardware, AI, and digital twins, both for its internal operations and for customers. It is a way to strap a jetpack on what we are doing and really accelerate the growth that we seek, said Allan. This strategy relies heavily on the ability to orchestrate complex systems, and business architects are central to that orchestration.
Allan said he does not see AI consuming technology jobs across his company. I am old enough to remember when the internet was going to put libraries out of business, or the Y2K bug, or blockchain, or the next shiny thing, he noted. Historical perspective shows that each wave of technology creates new roles and elevates human skills rather than eliminating them. The same pattern is playing out with AI, where demand is rising for professionals who can guide, audit, and refine AI-driven processes.
At the same time, he cautioned that AI could prove to be quite a challenge in areas where you have a high-touch horizontal. That process would involve identifying low-hanging fruit where you could be automating tasks that are very repetitive in nature, Allan said. Examples of areas ripe for what he calls agentification include operational tasks such as validating sales leads or extracting metrics from systems. These automations free up staff for higher-value work, but they also introduce dependencies that need careful management.
The good news is that business architects and like-minded roles elevate human skills. At Siemens, he said the emphasis is on encouraging professionals to develop deep domain knowledge from a vertical perspective. AI can really enhance what we do, he added. Such professionals help enable and oversee a range of vertical processes, including product design, development, deployment, production, and manufacturing. Allan said new technologies free up our staff from the mundane repetitive tasks, so we can start looking at higher-value tasks for jobs of the future. We need business architects who can better understand where the business is driving.
Also in great demand are professionals who can oversee user acceptance testing (UAT), especially as AI agents speed up software deployments, Allan said. Skills for delivering change management are also in demand, as well as having people who understand the psychology of change. They can answer the questions: What is in it for me? What is in it for my organization? Change management becomes even more critical in an AI context, where employees may fear displacement or struggle to trust automated decisions.
Allan suggested our current times can be viewed as never normal, in which technology is outstripping organizational design and organizational structure. Some of the biggest challenges right now for organizations are that technology can do anything you want it to do. The question is, from a human perspective, what you want it to do? And then how do you actually scale up your workforce to take advantage of it? My fear with some technology is that it is used to repave existing cart paths, rather than build a brand-new highway that is going to take you to somewhere that you have never been before.
This insight underscores the transformative potential of business architects. They are not just process managers; they are visionaries who can imagine new workflows, business models, and customer experiences enabled by AI. Their deep domain knowledge allows them to identify where AI can create entirely new value, not just incremental efficiency. For example, a business architect in manufacturing might envision a digital twin that simulates production lines in real time, integrating IoT data with AI to predict maintenance needs and optimize output. Such innovations require someone who understands both the technology capabilities and the business constraints.
As AI agents become more autonomous, the role of the business architect will expand to include governance and ethics. Who decides what rules an agent follows? How do you ensure compliance with regulations? How do you handle exceptions? Business architects will be the guardians of these guardrails, ensuring that AI operates within acceptable boundaries while still delivering value. This requires a blend of technical literacy, regulatory knowledge, and business judgment that is rare and highly valued.
The rise of agentic AI also demands new metrics for success. Traditional ROI calculations based on headcount reduction miss the point. Business architects will need to define metrics around speed of decision-making, quality of outcomes, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement. They will work with data scientists to build dashboards that track agent performance and with finance teams to quantify intangible benefits. This holistic measurement framework is essential to justify continued investment in AI.
Training and development for business architects must evolve too. Universities and professional organizations are beginning to offer certifications in business architecture with AI specialization. On-the-job learning will remain critical, as the field is moving too fast for static curricula. Companies like Siemens are investing in internal academies that rotate employees through different business units to build the breadth of experience that business architects need. Mentorship from senior leaders who have navigated previous technology shifts is also invaluable.
In the coming years, business architects may become as common in the C-suite as chief information officers or chief technology officers. They represent a new breed of executives who can bridge the gap between what is technically possible and what is commercially viable. The AI revolution is not just about algorithms and compute power; it is about people who can imagine a better future and lead the organization toward it. Business architects, with their tenacious spirit and deep domain knowledge, are precisely those people.
Source: ZDNET News