The answer is definitely NOT “more is better” across the board.

Most would argue that “integration” and “standardization” of business processes can be powerful strengths for both public and private sector organizations. They improve service and create efficiencies.

Yet, data integration across business units can be expensive, time consuming and, in many cases, unnecessary. Likewise, business process standardization can dampen creativity and innovation, and downgrade the customer experience.

So how do you decide what levels are best for you? In their book, Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, distinguished faculty from MIT and IMD International outline a framework for answering that question. Their framework is one of the best I’ve seen for kicking off discussions about performance improvement and organizational transformation.

If you would like to get a handle on the MIT framework, stay tuned for entries 2 through 6.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 11:37 am and is filed under Operating Models. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.