The architectural aspects of software systems are not typically explained to customers when a product is presented by respective vendors. One immediate downfall customers may face is when new business needs require modification of the core business processes within their organizations. In some cases, they might need to replace the entire systems or re-architect old ones to comply with new architectural standards. This paper describes a proposed framework that helps organizations envisage a comprehensive view of their system architecture to help make informed decisions. Organizations that fall under this category can benefit from the reference model which facilitates the negotiation and communication tasks with software vendors. The paper applies the proposed framework to an organization in Saudi Arabia to validate its applicability and generates an architectural design for their software systems.