The presence of an enterprise reference architecture aids an enterprise in its ability to understand its structure and processes. Similar to a computer architecture, the enterprise architecture is comprised of several views. The enterprise architecture should provide activity, organizational, business rule (information), resource, and process views of an organization.

Joseph Sarkis, Adrien Presley and Donald H. Liles (1995) "The management of technology within an enterprise engineering framework." in: Computers & industrial engineering.