Having more companies is always a challenge for management, especially to find synergies within the group of companies. An attempt at synergy may be to standardize and centralize information systems.

Every company over time builds and inherits a huge landscape of information systems. Is it possible to standardize information systems? It is possible and makes sense, for example, for an ERP, CRM or central billing. With standardization, the company will obtain a better flow of data, cost savings in the future,

The subsidiary companies work in different locations, in different markets with perhaps different legislation, with a different product portfolio and ultimately grew up with a different information systems history. They are not the same as the Mother Company. Therefore, their information systems and their landscape are different.

The ugly side of the standardization and centralization medal is that affiliated companies remain highly dependent on a central system and lose their market value. The company cannot be sold for the same amount of money without independent information systems as with fully autonomous information systems. In addition to IS as a stand-alone solution, the corresponding processes and organization are also missing. IF he can’t work alone and needs an environment that also works properly, an environment that “takes care” of him. In case of selling the company, information systems, processes and expert teams must be rebuilt after they were closed :). Perhaps centralization is a cyclical process, shutting down and then building from scratch just to satisfy certain managerial appetites.

Yes, it is a brutal world and it is a brutal standardization.

Can everything be standardized? Of course not, and sometimes it is the smallest part of today’s SIs, mainly in transaction production systems. With standardization, business intelligence solutions need more effort on all current reports to assimilate all new changes from source systems. All daughter company BIs will have to compensate for all tectonic shifts on the production side caused by forced standardization and centralization. BI has to recreate the missing data in the daughter companies. Is it possible to standardize BI? Production systems can be centralized in a certain way, but for BI it is very doubtful.