Driving Innovation KBC Group’s Experience with
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

KBC Group NV, a major European bank-insurance group, was formed in 1998 through the merger of two banks and an insurance company. With around 40,000 employees and 12 million customers worldwide, KBC operates in a fast-moving financial landscape that demands agility, clear governance, and consistent decision-making.

To stay competitive and support its long-term strategy, KBC needed a structured way to align its business goals with IT initiatives. This required more than just technical tools—it called for a unified approach to enterprise architecture that could connect people, processes, and systems.

Challenge

Before KBC could fully benefit from a unified enterprise architecture platform, there were several internal challenges they needed to address—each tied closely to the way architecture was being modeled, shared, and scaled across teams.

Models Were Built Differently With multiple architects involved; each team had its own way of modeling. There was no common structure, which meant that models couldn’t easily be reused or understood by others.
Too Much Information, Not Enough Clarity When decisions had to be made, models often presented more detail than necessary. Without a focused view, stakeholders struggled to see what mattered most.
Growing the Team, Losing the Structure What started with a small group of architects was set to grow significantly. But with more people involved, it became difficult to keep everyone aligned.
No Clear Ownership As the modeling efforts expanded, questions surfaced: Who’s responsible for keeping things up to date? Who approves of the changes? Without defined ownership and governance, it was difficult to maintain structure and quality over time.

Solution

To address these challenges, KBC and Sparx Systems rolled out Enterprise Architect together:

1. Unified metamodel
KBC developed a metamodel based on ArchiMate and TOGAF, defining layers (context, business, application, information, infrastructure) and reusable stereotypes. Most elements import automatically from the production environment, so architects start with real‑world data rather than building models from scratch. This “single source” approach gives everyone a shared language and speeds up decision‑making—exactly as Alain Garsoux notes when he points out that a consistent model framework empowers teams to plan roadmaps, map security needs and drive strategy.

2. Focused views
Instead of overwhelming users, KBC limited its initial rollout to four key diagrams—Process, Application Interface, Application and Technology. Each comes with clear instructions for quick creation. By restricting standard views and reports, architects tailor presentations to stakeholder needs without extra clutter. As Alain observes, concentrating on what matters most prevents unnecessary complexity and makes decision‑making faster.

3. Collaboration platform
Enterprise Architect’s built‑in collaboration features, together with Pro Cloud Server, allow real‑time sharing, version control and role‑based views. Jimmy Camps highlights that streamlined discussions and approvals across board meetings keep projects moving. Stakeholders see only the information they need in a format they understand.