In a decentralized Group, each Organizational unit
decides how it wants to Operate.
This means that the Organizational unit chooses its Model and especially the IT
Solution that goes with it, whether it be to manage the
Distribution, Production, Resources, or management.
It is far simpler for the director of the
Group, who does not have to get involved in these choices, and
more motivating for each decentralized Organizational unit,
which gains in autonomy. This is why many Groups have
historically preferred to multiply decentralized Solutions.
But this approach has limitations:
- The Transformation cost is higher: each Organizational unit carries out similar studies for its choice of Solution, purchases its software packages, links the Solutions to each other, builds training supports, manages its own hotline, carries out upgrades,...
- Operational synergy is impossible: how do we build shared service centers if they do not use the same Model? How do we duplicate best practices if the Models are different?
- It is more difficult to transfer employees from one Organizational unit to another, as a new Model will have to be used which requires an important effort to made by the employee. The opportunities offered to the Enterprise employees are more limited.
- It is more difficult to obtain good performance
management information: it is difficult to add
apples and oranges.
We go
- from a time where value was given to subsidiarity, "small is beautiful", decentralization,
- to a time where value is given to synergy,
economies of scale, coherence and centralization.
Therefore we can only recommend extreme vigilance on this
point: each time an Organizational unit would like to choose a
specific Solution, we must ask it to justify how its mission is
different to the other Organizational units and in what way the
standard Solution will not enable it to carry out its mission.
It is not a simple task as certain Organizational units are
likely to highlight their specificities to keep their specific
Model and their autonomy.
The story of George the Baker is made available under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.