Operating model

An explicit decision about which processes are standardized and which data are integrated across business units. It is the foundation for execution: it determines what is corporate, which entities are shared masters, and which indicators consolidate enterprise-wide.

The two questions that define it — what gets standardised and what gets integrated — are governance decisions with expensive consequences. Over-standardising suffocates units competing in different markets; under-integrating condemns the organization to reconciling data by hand indefinitely.